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AnonTechie writes:

A British man has become the first person in the world to receive a bionic eye implant that corrects for age-related macular degeneration (AMD)—the most common cause of vision loss in adults. The implant was a success: previously, the patient had no central vision at all; now, he has low-resolution central vision. The operation was carried out at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital; the recipient of the implant was Ray Flynn, aged 80.

The macula is at the back of the eye, in the central region of the retina. It is responsible for all of your high-resolution central vision—that is, when you gaze directly at something, it is the visual receptors in the macula that turn the light that reaches them into vision. With AMD, detritus (called drusen) slowly builds up between the vascular layer of the eye (the choroid) and the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE)—the layer that rods and cones are attached to. If too much drusen builds up, blood flow to the RPE is reduced enough that the rods and cones wither.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/british-man-receives-worlds-first-bionic-eye-implant-for-macular-degeneration/

[Related]: The Argus® II Retinal Prosthesis System

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takyon writes:

Kyoto University researchers have published a study showing success in halting the progression of age-related macular degeneration using stem cell therapy, but no reversal of the disorder:

It's official: The first use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in a human has proved safe, if not clearly effective. Japanese researchers reported in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that using the cells to replace eye tissue damaged by age-related macular degeneration (AMD) did not improve a patient's vision, but did halt disease progression. They had described the outcome at conferences, but publication of the details is an encouraging milestone for other groups gearing up to treat diseased or damaged organs with the versatile replacement cells, which are derived from mature tissues.

This initial success "is pretty momentous," says Alan Trounson, a stem cell scientist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. But the broader picture for iPS therapies is mixed, as researchers have retreated from their initial hopes of creating custommade stem cells from each patient's tissue. That strategy might have ensured that recipients' immune systems would accept the new cells. But it proved too slow and expensive, says Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan, who first discovered how to create iPS cells and is a co-author of the NEJM paper. He and others are now developing banks of premade donor cells. "Using stocks of cells, we can proceed much more quickly and cost effectively," he says.

[...] Immediately after surgery the first patient reported her eyesight was brighter. [Masayo] Takahashi says the surgery halted further deterioration of her eye, even without the drug injections still being used to treat her other eye, and there were no signs of rejection of the graft as of last December.

In related news, another article published on the same day in the same journal describes three elderly women who were blinded by an unproven stem cell treatment. They were treated at a for-profit clinic in Florida for the same condition as those in the Japanese study: age-related macular degeneration. In their case, stem cells derived from fat tissue were used. Visual acuity in the three patients ranged from 20/30 to 20/200 before the treatment, and 20/200 to "no light perception" a year later.

Autologous Induced Stem-Cell–Derived Retinal Cells for Macular Degeneration (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1608368) (DX)

Vision Loss after Intravitreal Injection of Autologous "Stem Cells" for AMD (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1609583) (DX)

Editorial discussing the previous papers:

Polar Extremes in the Clinical Use of Stem Cells (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1701379) (DX)

Original Submission