| Title | Stem Cell Treatment for Macular Degeneration | |
| Date | Wednesday March 21 2018, @10:07AM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the the-'eyes'-have-it dept. | ||
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
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printed from SoylentNews, Stem Cell Treatment for Macular Degeneration on 2023-07-03 10:39:07