UK-based surgeons have completed the first operation that will use embryonic stem cells as a potential way to cure blindness in patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration or AMD, launching human trials of the experimental treatment, reports indicate.
According to Reuters and BBC News, the procedure was performed last month on a 60-year-old woman at Moorefield’s Eye Hospital in London, and thus far, there have been no complications. The operation involved inserting a minuscule patch with specially engineered eye cells behind the retina, allowing treatment cells to replace damaged ones in the back of the eye.
The operation, which was part of the London Project to Cure Blindness, involved a patient who wished to remain anonymous. She is one of 10 scheduled to take part in the trials, and retinal surgeon Lyndon Da Cruz, who is performing the operations, said he hoped many patients would “benefit in the future from transplantation of these cells.”
Professor Peter Coffey of the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, co-leader of the London Project, told BBC News that surgeons “won’t know until at least Christmas how good her vision is and how long that may be maintained, but we can see the cells are there under the retina where they should be and they appear to be healthy.”
Hope for people with AMD
The operation centers around cells from the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), or the layer of cells which help nourish and support photoreceptors in the central part of the retina. This area is called the macula and is responsible for much of the vision used in day-to-day activities.
Each of the patients undergoing the trials had experienced a sudden loss of vision due to defects in the eye’s blood vessels, which causes RPE cells to die. The cells used in the procedure were originally derived from a donated early embryo, and once the treated cells are implanted, each of the patients will be monitored for one year to see if the procedure is safe and effective.
“This is truly a regenerative project. In the past it’s been impossible to replace lost neural cells,” Dr. Da Cruz told BBC News. “If we can deliver the very layer of cells that is missing and give them their function back this would be of enormous benefit to people with the sight-threatening condition,” which is believed to affect one in 10 people over the age of 65 worldwide.
Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at UCL, explained to Reuters that the trials were important both as a step towards finding a cure for AMD and as a way to better understand how to therapeutically use embryonic stem cells. If successful, the trials will open the door for embryonic stem cells to be cheaply made and for easy mass-production of the treatment, Mason added.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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