Regenerative medicine includes several therapeutic strategies to replace degenerated tissue and/or cells or to restore physiological functions. Although a number of challenges must still be addressed, the potential of stem cells (SC) and/or progenitor cell-based regenerative medicine to treat a variety of chronic, traumatic or degenerative diseases holds great promise. Cell populations for cell therapies, many of which were generated during normal ontogenesis of all vertebrates, include embryonic or adult stem cells, progenitor cells, and all reprogrammed progenitor cells in vivo and in vitro. The use of stem cells for regeneration of retinal degenerations and several experimental approaches have successfully replaced damaged photoreceptors and retinal pigment epithelium. There exists an adult stem cell population localized in the peripheral margin zone of the retina and regeneration occurs in fish and amphibian retinas. Similar stem cell populations have been identified in chicken and mouse retinas. Additionally, dedifferentiated Müller glia cells possess the potential to serve as a cell source of neuronal progenitor cells. Population of Müller cells dedifferentiates to cells with properties similar to multipotent retinal progenitor/stem cells and expresses neuronal and photoreceptor proteins. A fundamental question for replacement strategies of degenerated photoreceptors is what type of transplanted donor cells might have the potential to correctly integrate into the adult mammalian retina and generate mature photoreceptors that form synaptic connections to endogenous second-order neurons. Improvements in regard to integration efficiencies and the directed generation of rod or cone photoreceptors beside their specific enrichment will be of outmost importance for developing cell-based strategies towards clinical applications aiming to treat retinal degenerative diseases. Furthermore, retinal pigment epithelial cells possess two known properties which are crucial for their potential role as source for cell replacement in retinal degeneration: proliferation and plasticity. Neuroretinal and pigment epithelial cells arise from the same ontogenetic progenitor tissue and several trans-differentiation processes of pigment epithelial cells have been described during retinal diseases. Studies to manipulate stem cells and direct them to differentiate into certain cell types may ultimately lead to the development of strategies for retinal repair. Therefore, stem/progenitor cells have the potential to significantly impact therapies for degenerative diseases and retinal regeneration.