Cell Therapy: An Emerging Treatment Strategy of the Current Era for ophthalmic diseases

Cell therapy has emerged as a hope for incurable diseases, which aims to replace disordered cells with able cell populations to repair the underlying cause of disease initiation and progression. Over the past century, average human life expectancy has increased due to the advancement in medical science in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases as well as the accessibility of healthcare. However, with the increasing lifespan, age-related disorders have increased drastically. There is an unmet need to develop effective treatment strategies for age-related disorders, including neurological, autoimmune, skeletal, renal, liver, and ophthalmologic diseases. The current treatment strategy for chronic degenerative diseases only relies on palliative treatments that aim to delay the disease's progression. Organ transplantation is one of the options with limited success many times due to the immune response, rejection, shortage of available donors, and chronic immunosuppressive treatment following surgery. Therefore, regenerative medicines using various types of cells, including primary, progenitor, or stem cells, have emerged as promising treatment strategies. In recent years, stem-cell based therapies have found success in the clinical trials (1, 2). Stem cells have the limitless replicative potential, and the ability to generate all types of cells. Many cell therapies that reach advanced clinical trials are based on mesenchymal stem cells. However, pluripotent stem cell research has demonstrated great potential in regenerative medicines.