New developments in corneal endothelial cell replacement

Corneal transplantation is currently the most effective treatment to restore corneal clarity in patients with endothelial disorders. Endothelial transplantation, either by Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) or by Descemet stripping (automated) endothelial keratoplasty (DS(A)EK), is a surgical approach that replaces diseased Descemet membrane and endothelium with tissue from a healthy donor eye. Its application, however, is limited by the availability of healthy donor tissue. To increase the pool of endothelial grafts, research has focused on developing new treatment options as alternatives to conventional corneal transplantation. These treatment options can be considered as either ‘surgery-based’, that is tissue-efficient modifications of the current techniques (e.g. Descemet stripping only (DSO)/Descemetorhexis without endothelial keratoplasty (DWEK) and Quarter-DMEK), or ‘cell-based’ approaches, which rely on in vitro expansion of human corneal endothelial cells (hCEC) (i.e. cultured corneal endothelial cell sheet transplantation and cell injection). In this review, we will focus on the most recent developments in the field of the ‘cell-based’ approaches. Starting with the description of aspects involved in the isolation of hCEC from donor tissue, we then describe the different natural and bioengineered carriers currently used in endothelial cell sheet transplantation, and finally, we discuss the current ‘state of the art’ in novel therapeutic approaches such as endothelial cell injection.