Differentiating human embryonic stem cells into corneal epithelial-like cells

Transplantation of ex vivo expanded limbal stem cells (LSC) is the main treatment for limbal stem cell deficiency though the clinical problem of donor tissues shortage. Recently, as the development of tissue engineering, embryonic stem cells (ESC) derived corneal epithelial-like cells (ESC-CEC) has become a new direction to this issue.Our group successfully induced ESC into corneal epithelial-like cells, and in the present study we explored various aspects of physiological properties of ESC-CEC. The experiment included three samples: hES, the human embryonic stem cell line H1, RA_SB, the corneal epithelial-like cells derived from hES by differentiation with RA and SB, epithelial_cell, the primary human limbal stem cells from cadaver eyes. hES, the human embryonic stem cell line H1, RA_SB, the corneal epithelial-like cells derived from hES by differentiation with RA and SB, epithelial_cell, the primary human limbal stem cells from cadaver eyes.