Stem Cell Treatment For Eye Diseases

In a report in The Scientist magazine published in May 2017, a writer described that three women were blinded when they were given a procedure where their own adipose stem cells were injected into their eyes. Stem cell treatments like this are mostly unregulated by the FDA and largely unproven. The article was entitled “Women Lose Vision After Stem Cell Treatment”

Within days of the treatment the women suffered “severe complications” when a Florida-based company conducted the experimental treatment and had listed it on clinical trials.gov. But according to Stanford University’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the trial lacked safety data.

Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at UC Davis commented that “Is this just the tip of the iceberg for negative stem cell clinic outcomes given that there are around 600 such clinics in the US today largely operating generally without FDA approvals, lacking preclinical data to support what they are doing, and experimenting on thousands of patients for profit?” in a blog post.

Positive results using stem cells were reported by researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine where they successfully implanted a sheet of retinal pigment epithelial cells which were derived from pluripotent stem cells. Following treatment, the elderly woman given the treatment to did not have worsened vision after one year. (4)

Replacing the RPE layer (Retinyl Pigment Epithelium)

Stem cell researchers are making considerable progress in their efforts to replace the RPE layer, and they have confidence that this replacement may halt or even reverse the vision loss associated with AMD.

Eye Implant Improves Vision in People with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (Source: New Scientist)

Induced Pluriopotent Stem Cells, (iPS), are usually skin cells that are laboratory reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells to grow rods, cones or RPE cells. Other researchers are using human embryonic stem cells, while other groups are using RPE-specific stem cells taken from eyes in adult donor eye banks.

Other research labs are evaluating various methods to deliver stem cells to the eye. This includes making patches of RPE cells. One example of this is making a one cell-thick layer of RPE cells from adult RPE stem cells, placing it on a porous material that allows nutrients and waste to pass through it, and then implanting it in the eye. Animal studies using this patch have had promising results so far. (7)

The crucial question is whether these stem cells therapies will incorporate and work well with the patient’s own RPE cells, rods and cones and continue functioning well over the long term.