Preliminary research shows encouraging results with transplantation of retinal cells in patients with blindness caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a report in the August issue of American Journal of Ophthalmology (http://www.AJO.com).
Stem cells cultured by researchers on a simple contact lens miraculously restored sight to sufferers of blinding corneal disease.
The simple and inexpensive procedure, considered a breakthrough, requires a minimal hospital stay and significantly improves vision within weeks.
University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers from its School of Medical Sciences harvested stem cells from patients' own eyes to rehabilitate the damaged cornea.
Patients suffering from blindness now need not wait for donors as doctors have found a way to treat many with the stem cells derived from the cornea of a dead body.
Doctors at the AIIMS and a private clinic in the national capital are using corneal surface stem cells from a cadaver's (dead person) eye for curing corneal injuries in many.
In a rare surgical feat, doctors in Britain have successfully restored the sight of a blind man by transplanting his tooth into his eye.
A team, led by Christopher Lui of Sussex Eye Hospital, carried out the rare procedure on 42-year-old Martin Jones who was blinded for 12 years after a tub of hot aluminium exploded in his face as he worked at a scrapyard.
After establishing a procedure to restore vision in people whose cornea has been damaged by physical or chemical injury by harvesting limbal stem cells from the healthy eye and transplanting them to the eye that has been damaged, the Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute has moved to the next stage. The Institute has successfully converted skin cells of mice into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) that behave like embryonic stem cells.
Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball.
EU-funded scientists have succeeded in awakening dormant vision cones, an achievement that may lead to saving millions of people from going blind. The dormant cones, which normally remain in the eye even after blindness has occurred, were successfully reactivated by an international team of scientists led by the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland and the Institut de la vision in France. The findings are published in the journal Science.
Scientists hope the breakthrough will also slash the cornea transplant waiting list which every year falls short by more than 500 in Britain alone.
The new technique involves growing human tissue or collagen in the laboratory and then shaping it using a contact lens mould.
Damaged and scarred tissue from the front of the eye is then removed and the "biosynthetic" replacement is stitched in its place.
Eventually existing cells and nerves in the eye grow over the artificial cornea incorporating it fully into the eye.
Scientists in Germany claim to have carried out a "miracle" eye transplant which gave sight back to a visually impaired person.
A team, led by Prof Eberhart Zrenner of technology firm Retinal Implant AG, implanted a microchip in 46-year-old Finn Miikka Terho's eye, which has enabled the totally blind man to read letters of alphabet and the time on a clock face.
The new device shows that the damaged light receptor cells in eye can simply be replaced by a microchip; the rest of the image is obtained by the natural eye, British newspaper the 'Daily Express' reported.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky, US, compared eyes donated by deceased AMD patients with those of healthy individuals. The healthy were found to have three times higher levels of dicer, an enzyme, in their retinas.
Low levels of dicer cause the build-up of a genetic material alu, which becomes instrumental in killing off light-sensitive retinal cells in advanced "dry" AMD, the journal Nature reported.
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