About the Authors

Hongshan Liu

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Jianhua Zhang

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Chia-Yang Liu

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

I-Jong Wang

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

Martin Sieber

Affiliation Bionet Corp., Taipei, Taiwan

John Chang

Affiliation Bionet Corp., Taipei, Taiwan

James V. Jester

Affiliation Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, University of California Irvine Medical Center, Orange, California, United States of America

Winston W. Y. Kao

Winston.Kao@UC.Edu

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Competing Interests

Bionet Corp. is a funder and has provided resources for the preparation of umbilical mesenchymal and hematopoietic stem cells used in the present study. The authors confirm that this affiliation does not alter their adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: HL WWYK. Performed the experiments: HL MS JC JVJ. Analyzed the data: HL CYL IJW MS JC JVJ WWYK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JZ. Wrote the paper: HL. Scientific administrative supervision of the mouse clinic: JZ.