Advances in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration with induced pluripotent stem cells

Abstract

Age-related macular degeneration is the main cause of blindness in middle-aged and elderly people, seriously affects the quality of life of patients, but there is no effective therapy. As the disease progresses, the retinal pigment epithelial cells gradually degenerate and eventually cause irreversible damage to vision. The emergence of induced pluripotent stem cells provides a source of transplantable retinal pigment epithelial cells, avoiding immune and ethical issues, but still needs to overcome many obstacles and difficulties.

Keywords

• induced pluripotent stem cells
• age-related macular degeneration
• retinal pigment epithelium