Repairing the eye
More than half a million people in the uk have irreversible blindness which is caused by macular degeneration. This is close to 1 percent of the whole population. A large portion of these are the elderly. The disease is one where there is a progressive loss of vision in the center due to the degeneration of the macula, but there may be hope. A loss of site has a huge impact on quality of life.
A London based team is using a procedure whereby cells are taken from a suprplus human IVF embryo and are used to fix the eye. Professor P. Coffey and Lyndon da Cruz of UCL Institute of Ophthalmology teamed up the Professor P. Andrws of the University of Sheffield, to try and move this treatment into hospitals.
The procedure is as follows: surgical instruments introduced via three one millimeter holes in the eye, are used to go below the retina, then human eye cells from embryonic cells are introduced in a rolled up patch and injected through the hole, where the patch unfolds under the retina. This was initially tested on three sighted pigs and it took only 30 minutes. A human trial run has also been done, where the site of 4 out of 12 patients was repaired, by moving around the tissue of the patient.
Clinical grade cells are being produced in Sheffield for preparation for phase one trials.
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