Stem Cell Therapy for Treatment of Ocular Disorders

Figure 7

Pictures of eye fundus with pigmentation where retinal pigment epithelium differentiated from human ESCs was transplanted. (a–c) Color fundus pictures and images of spectral domain-optical coherence tomography at baseline of patient eyes of ARMD (dotted circle indicates an outline of the site of cell transplantation) and at an eye after 3 and 6 months of the transplantation. A pigmented patch of transplanted cells (arrows in (b) and (c)) grows bigger and has more pigmentation in six months. Optical coherence tomography (inset of figures) indicates the existence of cells on the inner sites of Bruch’s membrane at six months compared with the baseline of the eye. (d–f) Color fundus pictures and pictures of spectral domain-optical coherence tomography at baseline of patient eyes of Stargardt’s macular dystrophy (dotted circle indicates an outline of the site of cell transplantation) and an eye after six and twelve months after transplantation. Patches of transplanted cells exist around the edge of baseline atrophy in retinal pigment epithelium (e), which grow more significant after twelve months (arrows in (f)). Pictures of spectral domain-optical coherence tomography at baseline (d) and six months (e) indicate that the enhancement of pigmentation is found at the level of normal monolayer retinal pigment epithelium engraftment, the retinal pigment epithelium, and survival at six months (arrows in (e)), which is close to the site of bare Bruch’s membrane being lack of native retinal pigment epithelium. (g–i) Color fundus pictures of a patient of Stargardt’s macular dystrophy (dotted circle indicates an outline of the transplantation site). A big central site of atrophy can be seen on the preoperative picture (g). A site of transplantation of retinal pigment epithelium cells can be seen at the superior half of the atrophic lesion at six months (h), which grows bigger and has more pigmentation at fifteen months (i). Copyright 2015. Modified with permission from Elsevier Ltd. [72].