Emerging Therapeutic Strategies for Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency

Table 1

The features of corneal epithelial cells and limbal epithelial stem cells.

	Limbal epithelial stem cells (LESCs)	Corneal epithelium (CE)
Morphology	High nucleus-to-cytoplasm ratio; smaller than CE (10.1 ± 0.8 µm)	Lower nucleus-to-cytoplasm ratio; column cell (17.1 ± 0.8 µm)
Blood supply	High vascularization	Avascular
Clonogenicity	Holoclones	Paraclones
Pigmentation	Intrinsic melanogenesis	Absent pigment, transparency
Epithelial cell marker	K5 and K14	K3, K12, and Cx43
Putative stem cell marker	ABCG2, K19, vimentin, integrin α9 and so on	—
Metabolic activity	Low	High
Cell cycling	Slow cycling	Fast cycling