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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A Japanese woman in her forties has become the first person in the world to have her cornea repaired using reprogrammed stem cells.

At a press conference on 29 August, ophthalmologist Kohji Nishida from Osaka University, Japan, said the woman has a disease in which the stem cells that repair the cornea, a transparent layer that covers and protects the eye, are lost. The condition makes vision blurry and can lead to blindness.

To treat the woman, Nishida says his team created sheets of corneal cells from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These are made by reprogramming adult skin cells from a donor into an embryonic-like state from which they can transform into other cell types, such as corneal cells.

[...] The Japanese health ministry gave Nishida permission to try the procedure on four people. He is planning the next operation for later this year and hopes to have the procedure in the clinic in five years.

Original Submission