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)
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Macular degeneration: 'I've been given my sight back'
Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK - age-related macular degeneration.
Douglas Waters, 86, could not see out of his right eye, but "I can now read the newspaper" with it, he says. He was one of two patients given pioneering stem cell therapy at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
[...] Doctors have devised a way of building a new retinal pigment epithelium and surgically implanting it into the eye. The technique, published in Nature Biotechnology [DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4114] [DX], starts with embryonic stem cells. These are a special type of cell that can become any other in the human body. They are converted into the type of cell that makes up the retinal pigment epithelium and embedded into a scaffold to hold them in place. The living patch is only one layer of cells thick - about 40 microns - and 6mm long and 4mm wide. It is then placed underneath the rods and cones in the back of the eye. The operation takes up to two hours.
Related: British Man Receives World's First Bionic Eye Implant for Macular Degeneration
Stem Cell Therapy for Macular Degeneration: Conflicting Reports
Macular degeneration trial will be first human test of Nobel-winning stem cell technique
Curing [...] age-related macular degeneration [(AMD)], a major cause of blindness [...] was supposed to be low-hanging fruit.
The cause of AMD is well-known, the recipe for turning stem cells into retinal cells works like a charm, and the eye is "immunoprivileged," meaning immune cells don't attack foreigners such as, say, lab-made retinal cells. Yet more than a decade after animal studies showed promise, and nearly eight years since retinal cells created from embryonic stem cells were safely transplanted into nine patients in a clinical trial, no one outside of a research setting (or a rogue clinic) is getting stem cell therapy for macular degeneration.
That may change soon. Researchers in California expect to launch a Phase 2 clinical trial of stem cell therapy for age-related macular degeneration this year, while a team from the National Institutes of Health is not far behind: It is planning the first study in humans using what are called induced pluripotent stem cells, which were discovered 12 years ago and won a 2012 Nobel Prize. These cells (iPSCs, for short) are made by sending plain old adult cells back in time, biologically, until they're like embryonic stem cells — but without the ethical baggage those cells carry.
"This will be the first such study for iPSCs for any disease indication worldwide," said Kapil Bharti of the NIH's National Eye Institute. "When iPSCs were discovered in 2007, there was a lot of hype that we could easily turn them into therapies. But there were many unanswered questions" about how to safely make transplantable cells, questions that are only now being answered. "I hope this reignites the field," Bharti said.
He and NEI [National Eye Institute] colleagues reported in Science Translational Medicine [DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aat5580] [DX] on Wednesday that they had used retinal cells created from human iPSCs to treat a form of macular degeneration in rats and pigs, with results promising enough that they hope to start recruiting macular degeneration patients for a clinical trial in the next few weeks. That sets up a face-off between two forms of stem cells. In their trial, scientists at the University of Southern California are starting with stem cells derived from human embryos.
Related: Stem Cell Therapy for Macular Degeneration: Conflicting Reports
Congenital Blindness Reversed in Mice
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:36PM
The story about the 3 blind women isn't really about stem cell treatments. Its about medical scammers. It could happen with any 'experimental' treatment where the scammers present the treatment as medical trial, but then turn around and charge money for access which no legit trial would do.
They leveraged a federal website meant to track medical trials (so that failures would be public info that other researchers could learn from) to make it seem like their scam was a legit trial. They listed their trial on the website, so it looked legit - the could point to the .gov website to 'prove' their legitimacy. But then they withdrew from the website before the trial started (because there never was a real trial). Meanwhile they took money from people they had conned and then just injected them with shit.
This kind of sociopathic behavior is why the FDA was created in the first place.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:57PM (1 child)
And here I thought that this would, in obvious rebuttal science fashion, mean that anthropogenic global warming was not real, because of these conflicting reports. But it does suggest that tRump and Ryan are on the right track, we need to let private enterprise and the market blind more innocent people to the true dangers of climate change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @09:11AM
Why do you feel the need to false flag for Trump in this thread? Just go to the ones labeled politics...