Review Article
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 |
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