5 Corneal tissue engineering versus synthetic artificial corneas

With corneal blindness as the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, there have been significant efforts toward understanding how corneal cells interact with artificial materials and toward developing a corneal substitute. Two approaches have been taken. In the first, synthetic materials have been used to develop a scaffold with which the native tissue interacts. In the second, corneal tissue engineering has been used to develop material–cell combinations that mimic the structure of the native tissue. The state of the art in both cases is discussed and summarized. Promising future directions for research are outlined.