The pioneering work of Graziella Pellegrini and Michele De Luca dates back to 1997, when their study published in Lancet  revealed  the first therapeutic use of limbal cultures for the regeneration of corneal epithelium. Michele De Luca had worked with Howard Green, a pivotal researcher in regenerative medicine, who in 1984 developed the first therapeutic use of cultured cells with cells grown in his laboratory at Harvard.

Building on Green's technique for cultured epidermis, Pellegrini and De Luca developed, first in the world, methods of stem cell identification and culture for the regeneration of corneal epithelium. Pellegrini and De Luca are registered as "inventors" in a number of international patents filed in EU and in the US. They maintain close collaboration with Howard Green and his team at Harvard. The work of Pellegrini, De Luca, and Rama has  inspired  Virender S. Sangwan,  of the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad,  who established  the Sudhakar and Sreekanth Ravi Stem Cell Biology Laboratory and introduced in India the technique for the  transplants of cultured limbal grafts. J-TEC, an important player in the field of cell therapy/regenerative medicine and related fields, lists as consultants for autologous cultured corneal, Pellegrini and De Luca.  On June 18, at the Annual Meeting of International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco, Pellegrini presented data from a decade of  experiments with transplantation of limbal cultures together with Paolo Rama, a surgeon from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. The data show high rate of success -- a conspicuous result, confirmed by  Ivan Schwab, an ophthalmology professor and stem cell researcher at UC Davis who, reportedly, performed clinical trials based on Pellegrini’s work with less enduring benefits.