Study of Donor Age and Proliferation of Discarded Corneal Rim in Cell Culture

Abstract

Diseases of the cornea is the major cause of
blindness worldwide. Corneal diseases cause scarring which
finally results in functional blindness. Once opacity occurs,
corneal transparency can only be restored by keratoplasty, a
surgical procedure during which the defective cornea is replaced
with donor cornea. However, there is an acute shortage of donor
cornea and high incidence of graft rejection. Hence, researchers
have been trying to develop artificial cornea by cell culture. In
normal practice, the remaining rim of the donor cornea is
discarded after transplantation. We developed a new dissection
and primary culture protocol that utilizes the discarded corneal
rim as a source of cells for in vitro corneal research. Using the
protocol, we cultured the epithelium, stroma and endothelium
cells of cornea from donors aged 45 and 72 years. We observed
that the three cell-types from the cornea rim exhibited
morphology and proliferation rates similar to those from the
cornea center. Our results showed that corneal rims, irrespective
of donor age, are a good source of cells for in vitro corneal cell
culture.