Restoring the cornea from limbal stem cells

Free to access editorial from the January Regenerative Medicine issue by Markus Frank and Natasha Frank “...in light of the result that ABCB5 helps to amplify a PAX6-positive limbal stem cell population...it will now be important to test whether ABCB5 selection could also enhance the conversion of skin epithelial stem cells to corneal epithelial stem cells.” Corneal disease due to limbal stem cell (LSC) deficiency (LSCD) is a major cause of blind-ness worldwide. Recently, the ATP-binding cassette transporter ABCB5 was shown to be required for normal LSC function in corneal development and repair. Moreover, ABCB5 was found to serve as...