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Embryonic Stem Cell Retinal Implants Seem Safe, So Far

Posted by timothy on from the it's-that-or-the-lasik dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A biotechnology company said Monday that results from the world's first human trial using embryonic stem cells to treat eye diseases suggested that the new procedure appears to be safe four months after the cells were injected into the eyes of two blind patients. The study also describes visual improvements in patients, and experts said the findings hold promise for treating blindness in patients with currently incurable conditions like age-related macular degeneration in older patients and Stargardt's Disease, a main cause of blindness in young people."

4 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is truly good news by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Informative

    The main reason for this (for those of you who haven't seen a neocognitron in a fourth-year machine learning course) is that the eye does a lot more pre-work for the brain than just blitting a grid of pixels down the optic nerve. Recent efforts attempted to do that, however. There's much more complex pattern recognition going on even at this most basic level, in addition to the loss of precision for the non-focal area, and that helps reduce the cognitive load to something we can fully utilize.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  2. Re:my mom has macular degeneration by guru+zim · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are differentiated Retinal Epithelial Cells (RPE). http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673612600282.pdf This is neither rash, nor precocious. This is a Phase I/II trial, not some mad scientist shooting up random cells into rubes in the woods. I'd recommend that anyone reading this exchange read the linked journal and not put an excessive amount of faith into people talking authoritatively and with big words :)

  3. Re:"Improved Slightly"? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Informative
    From: Stem Cell Treatment for Eye Diseases Shows Promise

    Before the treatment, the woman with Stargardt’s was able to see the motion of a hand being waved in front of her but could not read any letters on an eye chart. Twelve weeks after the treatment, she was able to read five of the biggest letters on the eye chart with the treated eye, corresponding to 20/800 vision, according to the paper.

    Ms. Freeman, [another woman] who lives in Laguna Beach, Calif., went to 20/320 from 20/500 vision six weeks after the treatment.

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  4. Re:This is truly good news by Garridan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please, inform yourself. This sort of ignorance is embarrassing. "Harvesting fetuses" is not how we get embryonic stem cells. Excess fertilized embryos are a byproduct of in vitro fertilization. These embryos (not fetuses) would be destroyed if not donated to science. The fertilized embryos are on the order of 50-150 undifferentiated cells -- not a fetus -- in a microscope, one appears to be a spherical blob. At this point, the stem cells are "cultured" -- fed, and allowed to multiply, just like we grow bacteria or other single-celled organisms.