Clinical and Scientific Considerations for Whole Eye Transplantation: An Ophthalmologist's Perspective

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Over 40 million patients worldwide are legally blind from either retinal or optic nerve disease. 1 Retinal neurons, from photoreceptors to retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), have an intrinsically poor capacity for selfrepair after damage and no capacity to self-regenerate.Thus, vision restoration in patients with late-stage macular degeneration or glaucoma will likely require strategies to replace damaged cells.Currently, two major approaches are being pursued: (1) cell typespecific replacement and (2) whole eye transplantation (WET).Both strategies are associated with unique advantages and challenges.For the TVST readership, in this opinion piece, we summarize many of the salient barriers clinician-scientists must overcome to enable approaches like WET to transition from a cosmetic procedure to a surgery that provides functional recovery.