Transplantation techniques stem cells

Last, the surgical procedures such as keratoprosthe-sis [24] surgery and comeal and limbal transplantations are on the way to be developed. Yet, the transfer of cultured stem cells is a problem due to the need of mouse-derived feeder cells these might introduce new risks of disease transfer. Until those problems are not solved, these techniques are not applicable on humans, but these problems are likely to be solved in the near future [25]. 

Vajpayee, R.B., Thomas, S., Sharma, N., Dada, T, Tabin, G.C. Large-diameter lamellar keratoplasty in severe ocular alkali burns A technique of stem cell transplantation. Ophthalmology 107(9), 1765-1768 (2000)... 

Brazelton TR, Blau HM. Optimizing techniques for tracking transplanted stem cells in vivo. Stem Cells 2005 23 1251-65. 

Compared to the amount of research that has been invested in the study of SM skin injury, the eye has received relatively little attention during the last 20-30 years. The eye is, however, a target tissue that has a high potential for successful intervention against SM. There has been some use of comeal transplantation after mustard gas injury however, there is a high risk for transplant rejection due to inflammation and vascularization of the cornea. Despite this, keratoplasty has been used successfully in some blinded Iraq-Iran conflict veterans (Richter et al., 2006). It is likely to be one of the more successful techniques to restore vision to severely exposed individuals, especially if the limbus is also transplanted. This is needed to provide an additional supply of comeal epithelial stem cells, which become depleted over the years of trying to heal the SM latent wounds. 

Embryonic stem cells can proliferate indefinitely and under certain condition they can differentiate to neurons and gha in the laboratory. Even though they hold the promise of being able to repair or replace cells or tissues that are damaged or destroyed in neurodegenerative disorders, transplantation of embryonic stem cells is not feasible with current techniques. The lines of... 

FIGURE 134-1. Patients represented by the middle column are the best candidates for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation because this technique allows administration of chemotherapy or radiation in doses that would otherwise be intolerable due to severe myelosuppression. 

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