Stem Cell Therapy for Treatment of Ocular Disorders

Figure 5

Observation of differentiation of human Wharton’s jelly-derived MSCs into retinal cell phenotypes in RCS rats by confocal microscopy. Confocal microscopy picture of the whole eye (A) and magnified pictures of the transplanted region (B–D). The red box indicates the magnified region, and the white arrow demonstrates the transplanted region. The antibodies used were anti-PKC-α (bipolar cell), anti-human/rat rhodopsin (rod photoreceptor), anti-human stem 121 (MSC), and anti-GFAP (Müller glial cells). DAPI was used to stain the nucleus in the retinal layer. Colocalization of DAPI (blue) and stem 121 (red) with PKC-α (green), GFAP (green), and rhodopsin (green) was found at day seventy after transplantation, suggesting that human Wharton’s jelly-derived MSCs have the ability to differentiate into retinal neurons or to fuse with the degenerating neurons. Scale bar indicates 10 μm. Modified with permission from Creative Commons Attribution License [103].