The first decade of continuous progress in retinal transplantation

In recent months, neural fetal retina has been transplanted into blind human patients affected by Retinitis Pigmentosa. Initial success, as documented by improved visual activity, has been reported (del Cerro et al., Neuroscience Abstract, 1996). With the rapid progress in human patients, additional questions are arising concerning transplantation issues. Additional answers and further success in treating clinical disease will necessarily come from new laboratory research in animal models as well as in vitro systems. This increases the need for evaluation of the data already gathered over the first decade of retinal transplantation. The extensive experimental background work that preceded the current wave of human retinal transplants is reviewed in this paper, with particular emphasis given to the work dealing with the transplantation of neural retina.