Retinal transplantation: neurobiological problems and clinical perspectives

Retinal transplantation, formerly perceived as unrealistic, has become over the past decade a major clinical and biological undertaking in several lab oratories and eye clinics. We describe the insights gained though the pione ering experimental works of Del Cerro rf al., Turner at al., Gouras ef al., Silver man et al., Aramant et al., Lund rt al. e.g. the survival of transp lants, the rack of immune response to photoreceptors, their Integration and expression of neuronal markers, but also the dysplastic arrangement into r osettes and the lack of a definitive proof for functionality. The rejection of retinal pigment epithelium transplants points towards the development o f autotransplantation approaches (iris, macular translocation). The demonst ration by our team of paracrine effects of transplanted photoreceptors on h ost cones in the rd mouse leads the way to human clinical trials and identi fication of cone Survival factors.