Abstract:

Although many of retinal diseases have been treated with appropriate treatments, as a group of global blinding disease, retinal degenerative diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and macular atrophy diseases still have no special effective therapies. Stem cells are considered as an alternative treatment for retinal degenerative diseases because they have special self-renewal and multi-directional differentiation capabilities. Stem cells that are expected to treat retinal degenerative diseases include embryonic stem cells, bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. These different types of stem cell transplantation have their own advantages and disadvantages, and have achieved certain positive effects. However, the regulation mechanism of stem cell differentiation and the appropriate in-vivo and in-vitro environment are still unclear, whether it can differentiate into specific types of cells, whether cell function can be completely expressed, how to avoid immune rejection and tumorigenicity are all urgent problems to be solved.