I'm often asked the question whether stem cells will cure my macular degeneration. Trials are underway whereby stem cells are injected into the eye. One of the first trials did however show that the cells for some reason migrated from the back of the eye to the more anterior parts of the eye which was disappointing. However a publication on January 24 in the Lancet show some promising results from the Jules Stein Eye Institute Retina Division, Department of Ophthalmology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.. Here they injected specially prepared stem cells into the eye of two patients. One with the congenital condition Stargardts and one with macular degeneration. Although not specified this sounds like dry macular degeneration. This study was to test whether not the cells would survive as well as if there were any adverse effects. Their study reported that there were no adverse effects. They did report that both the patients reported a slight improvement in vision although a long way from curing the condition. Thus this is encouraging news and am sure we will see more trials over the next few years reporting in this area.
In many respects this remains a holy grail with high expectations that the magic “stem cells“ will repair damaged retina and enable patients to see again. To be honest I cannot see how stem cells would for instance repair the scar tissue and damage that occurs with wet macular degeneration. However I can conceptually see that maybe some improvement and repair may occur in dry degeneration and possibly other retinal conditions where the anatomy of the retina is not too badly disturbed. One has to remember the retina is a complex structure. The photoreceptors have to interconnect to the delicate neurones within the retina which then connect neurones passing down the optic nerve.
October 2013 Professor Kevin Gregory Evans (use to work with me at Western Eye Hospital) from Columbia University in Vancouver Canada came over and gave a serios of fascinating lectures including his teams research into stem cells. Progress is being made, they can now make really quite pure Stem cells that react to light. This is good news. The next challenges though is to get these cells into the eye safely and then integrated with the Neurones of the retina so that their responses to light can be conducted down the optic nerve and into what we would call vision. This is the next huge hurdle and there remains clearly a long way to go. But a very exciting area of research that is most active. Most interestingly that in Age Related Macular Degeneration there are over 1400 clinical trails being undertaken world wide. It is a most active area of research and we can expect new drugs to periodically be brought to market and for clinical use.
A really complex layer and it would be remarkable if stem cells could repair damaged retina. All we can do is hope and wish the research teams good luck in their efforts.
Short cut to article http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22281388