Advance in methods of induced-embryonic stem cell differentiation to retinal cells

Retinal degenerative disease is the leading cause of visual loss, the mechanism is not clear and has no effective treatment method.In recent years, the field of stem cell research has made great progress.Stem cells have the potential of differentiating into all the body cells.Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) can be used to differentiate a variety of retinal cells, which has brought a new promise for the treatment of retinal degeneration disease.However, the most important step of this treatment is how to differentiate ESCs into photoreceptor cells and retinal pigment epithelium (RPF) cells.In this paper, we introduced the recent progress in the differentiation methods of ESCs into retinal cells, which contains spontaneous differentiation method, co-culture method, growth factors and small molecules induced method, adherent monoculture method, three dimensional differentiation method.