Bioengineering and the Eye—3rd Edition

A special issue of Bioengineering (ISSN 2306-5354). This special issue belongs to the section "Regenerative Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 509

Special Issue Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is the third edition of the previous release of “Bioengineering and the Eye” and “Bioengineering and the Eye—2nd Edition”.

The field of eye regeneration is experiencing a surge of innovation, with tissue engineering and bioengineering offering promising solutions for debilitating conditions like corneal damage and retinal degeneration. Recent breakthroughs encompass stem cell therapies, the development of functional ocular tissue equivalents, and the application of advanced biomaterials as well as 3D bioprinting. Despite this progress, significant hurdles persist. Achieving the long-term, functional integration of engineered tissues with existing ocular structures and mitigating immune rejection remain key challenges that researchers are actively addressing.

A large host of concepts and technologies remain unexplored. The third edition of this Special Issue calls for original research articles, as well as reviews, that tackle ocular problems using bioengineering/biomedical/tissue engineering approaches.

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Karamichos
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • stem cell therapies
  • functional ocular tissue equivalents
  • biomaterials
  • 3D bioprinting
  • tissue engineering

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 2173 KiB  
Article
Different Expression of Vascularization and Inflammatory Regulators in Cells Derived from Oral Mucosa and Limbus
by Eleni Voukali, Joao Victor Cabral, Natalia Smorodinova, Vojtech Kolin, Magdalena Netukova, Tomáš Vacík and Katerina Jirsova
Bioengineering 2025, 12(7), 688; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering12070688 - 24 Jun 2025
Viewed by 267
Abstract
Bilateral limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) can be effectively treated with cultivated oral mucosa epithelial cell transplantation (COMET). However, COMET is associated with greater superficial neovascularization than limbal stem cell (LESC) transplantation, the gold standard for unilateral LSCD. To investigate the intrinsic molecular [...] Read more.
Bilateral limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) can be effectively treated with cultivated oral mucosa epithelial cell transplantation (COMET). However, COMET is associated with greater superficial neovascularization than limbal stem cell (LESC) transplantation, the gold standard for unilateral LSCD. To investigate the intrinsic molecular features of cells intended for grafting, we assessed the in vitro expression of genes involved in vascularization and inflammation using real-time quantitative PCR and multifactorial linear models. Oral mucosal epithelial cells (OMECs) and limbal epithelial cells (LECs) were cultured in either conventional (COM) or xenobiotic-free (XF) media on fibrin substrates. Gene expression profiling revealed distinct transcriptional signatures. The pro-angiogenic genes AGR2, ANGPTL2, CRYAB, EREG, JAM3, and S100A4 were significantly higher in LECs (adjusted p < 0.01), whereas FGF2 was higher in OMECs (adjusted p < 0.001). The anti-angiogenic genes TIMP3 and SERPINF1 were higher in LECs (adjusted p < 0.01), while COL18A1 was higher in OMECs (adjusted p < 0.01). OMECs also showed significantly greater expression of the immunoregulatory genes IL1B, IL6, TNF, CXCL10, and IL1RN (adjusted p < 0.01). Cultivation induced phenotypic changes in OMECs, with COM and XF media exerting comparable effects. These results highlight the contribution of inflammatory mediators to neovascularization following COMET. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioengineering and the Eye—3rd Edition)
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