Focus on stem cell-based therapy for retinal degenerative diseases

Retinal degenerative diseases are the common cause of blindness for all ages.Cell replacement therapy is the main strategy for treating retinal degenerative diseases.Recently, several retinal pigment epithelium(RPE) transplantation clinical trials have taken place worldwide and greatly enhanced the visual function of patients.However, irreversible loss of photoreceptors has been found in the late stage of diseases.Thus, photoreceptor transplantation is essential for the treatment of late-stage retinal degenerative diseases.How to obtain the clinical-grade amount of human cone photoreceptors remains to be one of the technical obstacles.This review introduced the present clinical trials of RPE transplantation and research achievements of photoreceptor transplantation.Furthermore, we will focus on the studies of stem cell-derived human photoreceptor differentiation.Lastly, the difficulties and future directions of stem cell-based therapy for retinal degenerative diseases will be discussed.