Abstract
Retinal degenerative disease such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration causes visual defects with the progress in their diseases. In case of retinitis pigmentosa a large number of mutations in genes that involved in phototransduction pathway have been identified. However pharmacological treatment is presently unavailable for these diseases. Several strategies such as retinal pigment epithelial cell transplantation, growth factor application, vitamin supplementation or gene therapy are under examination for preventing the photoreceptor cell death. Among these strategies, some growth factors are commonly effective on preventing photoreceptor cell death even the mutated genes cause that photoreceptor cell death is different. Is it possible to prevent photoreceptor cell death and to maintain the visual function by continuously supplying growth factors to photoreceptor cells? Which methodology is better to supply growth factor continuously, gene transfer to retina or transplantation? We describe here the approach to prevent photoreceptor cell death by using gene transfected iris pigment epithelial cell transplantation.
