Of note, our team has started the first in man clinical trial of cultivated CEC-injection therapy in Japan.
This protocol enables the efficient in vitro expansion of CECs and may ultimately provide clinicians with a new therapeutic modality in regenerative medicine. However, we successfully established a CEC culture protocol for clinical use. One technical obstacle that currently exists is the difficulty of the in vitro expansion of CECs, as they exhibit fibroblastic phenotypes with loss of pump and barrier functions while under the culture conditions. We also demonstrated that in rabbit and monkey corneal endothelial dysfunction models, corneal transparency was restored via the injection of cultivated CECs with the selective ROCK inhibitor into the anterior chamber. In addition to animal experiments, we have started a clinical trial of ROCK inhibitor eye drops in combination for treatment of human corneal endothelial dysfunction patients. Our subsequent studies revealed that administration of ROCK inhibitors in the form of eye drops promotes CEC proliferation in rabbit and monkey in vivo models. Kay, Yann Barrandon, Noriko Koizumi, Shigeru Kinoshita STEM CELLS, WILEY-BLACKWELL, 31(7)1396 - 1407, Jul. In 2009, we demonstrated that the selective ROCK inhibitor, Y-27632, showed unique effects on cultured CECs: 1) promotion of proliferation 2) enhancement of cell adhesion and 3) suppression of apoptosis. Corneal Endothelial Cell Fate Is Maintained by LGR5 Through the Regulation of Hedgehog and Wnt Pathway Kana Hirata-Tominaga, Takahiro Nakamura, Naoki Okumura, Satoshi Kawasaki, Eunduck P.
He has also appeared in the Israeli movie A Matter of Size and the Thomas and Friends movies Hero of the Rails and Misty Island Rescue in 2009 and. In recent years he has had roles in major motion pictures such as Revolver, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Last Samurai, and Sunshine. We showed that a Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) inhibitor can be useful in treating corneal endothelial dysfunction. Togo Igawa, born in Tokyo on 26 September 1946, is a Japanese actor who works primarily in British films and television. When corneal endothelial cell density decreases to a critical level, the cornea exhibits haziness, with edema, due to decompensation of the corneal endothelial function.
The corneal endothelium is critical for maintaining homeostatic corneal transparency, which it accomplishes by pump and barrier functions. I have been developing both pharmaceutical and tissue engineering treatment for corneal endothelial dysfunction.