“…Much of our current understanding of the proliferative capabilities and characteristics of CECs has been derived from studies involving animals such as monkeys (Koizumi et al , ; Okumura et al , , Okumura et al, ), rabbits (Okumura et al , ), cows (Ho et al , ; Li et al, ; Su et al , ), cats (Fan et al , ; Proulx et al , ), rats (Bredow et al , ), mice (Espana et al , ; Knels et al , ) and zebrafish (Heur et al , ). The common utilization of animal models in the study of CEC behaviours can be ascribed to (a) a global shortage of human donor corneas, which precludes the widespread use of hCECs in experimental studies, and (b) the presence of considerable interspecies similarities in CEC genotypic and phenotypic expression patterns.…”