Current Progress in Corneal Xenotransplantation

Blindness is a devastating situation, and one of the common causes is corneal blindness. Corneal transplantation is the standard treatment for the corneal blindness. The lack of human donors demands the exploration of alternative treatments such as corneal xenotransplantation and bioengineered corneas. We review the researches regarding immunological and physio‐anatomical barriers of corneal xenotransplantation, recent progress of corneal xenotransplantation in nonhuman primate studies, and updates of regulatory guidelines to conduct clinical trials for corneal xenotransplantation. The current development of genetically-engineered and gene-editing technologies suggests that the promise much for the field of xenotransplantation. A clinical trial of xenotransplantation using a cellular porcine corneal stroma has already been conducted; however, safety concerns have not been reported so far. With regard to the regulatory aspects and preclinical efficacies, corneal xenotransplantation has become one of the clinically realistic options as human substitutes and progress in recent research is promising to advance corneal xenotransplantation field