Endogenous Therapeutic Agents for Acute Corneal and Ocular Surface Injuries

Acute corneal injuries vary greatly in morbidity, but can cause severe cases of vision loss. Among these injuries are mechanical corneal traumas and acute chemical burns. The current standard of care in the acute phase of management is aimed at reducing the offending agent, pain management, and infection prevention; however, corneal scarring and limbal stem cell deficiency may result even after the acute management of severe corneal injuries. In the most serious cases, surgical intervention, including cornea or stem cell transplantation, may be required to restore functional vision. As such, there is a great need for additional therapies in the acute phase of management that can help to reduce long-term, vision-reducing outcomes. Certain endogenous agents have emerged as a therapeutic class that may be used for the promotion of corneal wound healing with the goal of reducing the odds of requiring invasive surgery. In this review, we provide an overview of novel endogenous therapeutic agents for the treatment of acute corneal trauma and acute chemical burns. The endogenous therapeutic agents explored include amnion, exosomes, stem cells, platelet-rich plasma, peptides, growth factors, and umbilical cord serum. The results of these studies indicate encouraging potential for endogenous agents to facilitate corneal recovery and vision preservation. However, because many of these agents are in the early stages of development and clinical trials, further research is required to understand their efficacy in the clinical setting.