91
EW CORNEA
September 2015
Contact information
Cooper: coopdk@upmc.edu
Hara: harah@upmc.edu
under "clean" conditions to pre-
vent any pig infectious agent being
transferred with the corneal graft. In
parallel, patients would be mon-
itored for potential infections at
certain intervals.
"As when human corneas are
transplanted, the central portion of
the patient's diseased cornea is re-
moved, and the healthy pig corneal
graft is sutured in to replace it," Dr.
Hara said. For many patients with
advanced corneal disease, according
to Dr. Hara, there are currently no
truly successful alternatives to corne-
al transplantation.
"Therefore, the use of pig
corneas would enable many blind
patients to see again," he said.
How close are we to corneal
xenotransplantation?
The research team from the
Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation
Institute, together with collaborators
worldwide, continue to study the
immense clinical potential of xeno-
transplantation in the treatment of
corneal blindness.
"In animal studies, a group in
Seoul, Korea, has achieved successful
pig corneal transplantation in mon-
keys for periods in excess of 1 year,"
Dr. Cooper said.
"Several pig corneal transplants
in patients have already been carried
out in China with encouraging
results after follow-up for periods of
6 months to more than 3 years," Dr.
Hara said.
To address the international
shortage of human corneal donors
for transplantation, other approach-
es are also being explored as possible
alternatives: stem cells, synthetic
corneas, biosynthetic corneas, and
amniotic membrane transplanta-
tion.
Among these alternatives,
according to Drs. Cooper and
Hara, modern xenotransplantation
(using pigs as the source animal)
has the most potential, offering an
unlimited number of corneas for
the treatment of corneal blindness
worldwide.
Drs. Hara, Cooper, and col-
leagues reported in a paper pub-
lished in Xenotransplantation in
March 2014: "While each of these
has potential, we suggest that xeno-
transplantation holds the greatest
potential for a corneal replacement.
With the increasing availability
of genetically engineered pigs, pig
corneas may alleviate the global
shortage of corneas in the near
future." EW
Editors' note: Drs. Cooper and Hara
have no financial interests related to
this article.
