網膜の再生医療

The advent of iPS cells by Yamanaka et al. has accelerated the clinical application of regenerative medicine. In the field of retinal diseases in ophthalmology, we conducted the first-in-human transplantation using the autologous iPS cell-derived retinal pigment epithelial cell sheet for age-related macular degeneration in 2014. Since then, we have been conducting clinical research, aiming for more general treatments, and have now entered the stage of verifying its effectiveness. For photoreceptor degenerative diseases, we conducted a transplantation of iPS cell-derived retinal organoids containing photoreceptor cells in 2020 and have just confirmed the feasibility and safety of the treatment. For retinal organoid transplantation, it is also important to determine whether the graft can be functionally integrated into the neural network, and further study is needed on how to evaluate the function as well after transplantation in humans. Furthermore, the pathological condition and environment of the recipient eye are crucial in transplantation therapy, and in the future, it will be necessary to consider therapy indications based on the specific disease pathology.