Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011;4(4):413-21.
doi: 10.3980/j.issn.2222-3959.2011.04.19. Epub 2011 Aug 18.

Mesenchymal stem cells for retinal diseases

Wei Xu  1 , Guo-Xing Xu
Affiliations

Mesenchymal stem cells for retinal diseases

Wei Xu et al. Int J Ophthalmol. 2011.

Abstract

Retinal diseases are featured with the common result of retinal cell apoptosis that will cause irreversible vision loss. Various attempts have been made for the solution against cell death. However, few approaches turn out to be effective. With the progress in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) research, MSCs were considered as a promising source for cell replacement or neuroprotection in retinal disorders. MSCs have the property of self-renewal and are multipotent cells derived from various mesenchymal tissues, which were demonstrated being capable of differentiating into multilineage tissue cells. Some works were also done to differentiate MSCs into retinal cells. MSCs could be induced to express retinal cell markers under certain stimuli. Recent studies also suggest that MSCs should be an ideal source for neuroprotection via the secretion of a variety of neurotrophins. Engineered MSCs were also used as vehicles for continuous delivery of neurotrophins against retinal degeneration with encouraging results. Since there are still barriers on the differentiation of MSCs into functional retinal cells, the use of MSCs for neuroprotection in retinal diseases seems to be a more practicable approach and worthy of further investigations.

Keywords: differentiation; mesenchymal stem cells; neurotrophin; retina.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Cell replacement and neuroprotection are the potential applications of MSCs for neurodegenerative diseases
Cell replacement could be achieved by the differentiation of MSCs or MSCs-associated endogenous regeneration. Neuroprotection results from the secretion of neurotrophins by both MSCs and host cells or other mechanisms during the process of endogenous repair
Figure 2
Figure 2. Major approaches for administration of MSCs (green) in retinal disorders
Both systemic and local administrations of MSCs were used in animal models (right). For local administration, intravitreal and subretinal injections were conducted according to different purposes (left)
Figure 3
Figure 3. Migration and integration of MSCs (green) after administration
The grafted cells differentiated into RPE-like cells (brown arrow), photoreceptor-like cells (blue arrow) and RGC-like cells (green arrow). The host retina also benefits from MSCs-induced neurotrophins (blue triangles) up-regulation. RPE=retinal pigment epithelium; RGC=retinal ganglion cells
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Lee JW, Fang X, Gupta N, Serikov V, Matthay MA. Allogeneic human mesenchymal stem cells for treatment of E. coli endotoxin-induced acute lung injury in the ex vivo perfused human lung. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2009;106:16357–16362. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Quevedo HC, Hatzistergos KE, Oskouei BN, Feigenbaum GS, Rodriguez JE, Valdes D, Pattany PM, Zambrano JP, Hu Q, McNiece I, Heldman AW, Hare JM. Allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells restore cardiac function in chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy via trilineage differentiating capacity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2009;106:14022–14027. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sasportas LS, Kasmieh R, Wakimoto H, Hingtgen S, van de Water Jeroen AJM, Mohapatra G, Figueiredo JL, Martuza RL, Weissleder R, Shah K. Assessment of therapeutic efficacy and fate of engineered humanmesenchymal stem cells for cancer therapy. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2009;106:4822–4827. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ohtaki H, Ylostalo JH, Foraker JE, Robinson AP, Reger RL, Shioda S, Prockop DJ. Stem/progenitor cells from bone marrow decrease neuronal death in global ischemia by modulation of inflammatory/immune responses. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2008;105:4638–14643. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Amado LC, Saliaris AP, Schuleri KH, St John M, Xie JS, Cattaneo S, Durand DJ, Fitton T, Kuang JQ, Stewart G, Lehrke S, Baumgartner WW, Martin BJ, Heldman AW, Hare JM. Cardiac repair with intramyocardial injection of allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells after myocardial infarction. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2005;102:11474–11479. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources