再生医学による重症角膜疾患の新規治療法開発への戦略的研究

摘要

The cornea is the transparent, main optical element of the eye that focuses light onto the retina, and its surface is covered by a non-keratinized. stratified epithelium that serves to protect the corneal interior from ingress by external agents. It is believed that corneal epithelial stem cells exist: in the basal cell layer of the limbal region, the transitional zone between the cornea and conjunctiva on the ocular surface, and that file complete loss of corneal epithelial stem cells results in corneal scarring with vascu-larization which severely affects visual function. This devastating diseased state is known as corneal epithelial stem cell deficiency, the treatment of which has remained unsuccessful worldwide until recently. In efforts to solve this problem, our extensive research has focused on the development of basic understanding and novel therapeutic modalities for corneal epithelial stem cell deficiency, obtaining success in treating these corneas by regenerative medicine. Clearly, ocular surface reconstruction by tissue engineering using somatic stem cells will prove to be the next generation of therapeutic modalities.Thus, we first: investigated the transplantation of cultivated human corneal epithelial stem cells on amniotic membrane for treating corneal epithelial stem cell deficiency. The cultivated sheets were created by co-culture with 3T3 fibroblast. air-lifting, and corneal epithelial stem cell culture on anmiotic membrane. These cultivated cells demonstrated the presence of keratin 3 and 12 specific to in vivo corneal epithelium, tight junction related proteins, and a reasonable amount of proliferalive activity.