Ex vivo cultivated retinal pigment epithelial cell transplantation for the treatment of rabbit corneal endothelial dysfunction.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThis study was ratified by the ethical committees of Shandong Eye Institute (W202202220025) and operated according to the Declaration of Helsinki. Animal experiments were performed in accordance with the Institutional Animal Care and Use of Laboratory Animals adhered to the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Statement, with the approval of the experimentation committee of the Shandong Eye Institute (W202202220025). Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

"Funding This work was supported by Shandong Provincial key research and development program (Grant Nos. 2022CXGC010505 and 2021LCZX08), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81900834 and 82271058), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No. ZR2019ZD37), Taishan Scholar Program (Grant No. tspd20221110) and Academic promotion program of Shandong First Medical University (Grant Nos. 2019PT002 and 2019RC008)."