Researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales have used an elegant stem-cell based treatment to treat corneal opacity in 3 HUMAN patients.  Unlike many stem cell advances trumpeted as breakthroughs, this technique has already delivered real, life-changing results.  (Be sure to see the video embedded below.)  Two patients, previously legally blind, have regained functional eyesight, while the third, who could always read the biggest letters on an eye-exam chart, is once again able to drive.  The improvement has already lasted for a full 18 months, and as the images show (h/t MedGadget), such dramatic corneal regeneration is clearly visible to the naked eye.

Visible progress. (Each row shows a single eye's progress.)

For folks of means, this incredible advance in vision restoration seems destined to obviate donor-to-recipient cornea transplants. For the world’s poor, meanwhile, the cheap, low-risk, and minimally invasive procedure provides early hope that such Amazing Grace moments may one day reach the long tail.

The procedure is ingeniously simple. Doctors begin by collecting a small amount of corneal tissue from a patients’ own eyes. They then culture naturally occurring stems cells on a soft contact lens, remove damaged tissue from the patient’s cornea(s), and put the stem-cell-laden lens in place – no suturing, no lasers. The patient is then released, and over the next 10 days the stem cells develop into a healthy new cornea.

Remarkably, for a patient whose corneas were too badly damaged to permit the initial tissue harvest, stem cells collected from the conjunctiva actually switched to the corneal phenotype and performed the same trick.  Scientists at UNSW are therefore optimistic that their technique may be adapted to other parts of the eyes, and perhaps even the skin. This would be welcome news to citizens of stem-cell-shy countries, but we’ll have to wait and see.  For now, a bigger study of the basic technique is planned to confirm and develop the initial results.

Using a patient’s own stem cells to treat blindness has distinct advantages over other recently unveiled blindness therapies, which have used more elaborate/risky strategies to treat other causes of blindness. The most similar approach is the Pfizer-backed project that aims to cure age-related macular degeneration using embryonic stem cells. This treatment, currently only in European trials for political reasons, works by regenerating retinal pigment epithelial cells, on which the light-sensitive rods and cones depend.

More radical ideas, which take advantage of neuroplasticity, include:

1. the implantable eye telescope, which re-focuses light away from the macula and lets the brain adjust to the new pattern;

2. the “bionic eye” system that sends data collected by a camera to the patient’s retina as electrical impulses;

3. the work-around see-with-your-tongue strategy that sends visual data through the mouth; and

4. human sonar, for the real do-it-yourselfers.

Given the many developments in vision-restoration, one might wonder why such a straightforward treatment was not discovered earlier. Philosophical explanations leap to mind (Is Western science too focused on lasers and mechanical implants to see the low-hanging fruit?!) but the answer may be simpler. As the official UNSW statement reports, it turns out that only a single type of contact lens works for this procedure.

To see the procedure in action, watch the video: