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Patients Regain Sight After Groundbreaking Trial (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK -- age-related macular degeneration. Douglas Waters, 86, could not see out of his right eye, but "I can now read the newspaper" with it, he says. He was one of two patients given pioneering stem cell therapy at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. Cells from a human embryo were grown into a patch that was delicately inserted into the back of the eye.
The macula is the part of the eye that allows you to see straight ahead -- whether to recognize faces, watch TV or read a book. The macula is made up of rods and cones that sense light and behind those are a layer of nourishing cells called the retinal pigment epithelium. When this support layer fails, it causes macular degeneration and blindness. Doctors have devised a way of building a new retinal pigment epithelium and surgically implanting it into the eye. The technique, published in Nature Biotechnology, starts with embryonic stem cells. These are a special type of cell that can become any other in the human body. They are converted into the type of cell that makes up the retinal pigment epithelium and embedded into a scaffold to hold them in place. The living patch is only one layer of cells thick -- about 40 microns -- and 6mm long and 4mm wide. It is then placed underneath the rods and cones in the back of the eye. The operation takes up to two hours.
The macula is the part of the eye that allows you to see straight ahead -- whether to recognize faces, watch TV or read a book. The macula is made up of rods and cones that sense light and behind those are a layer of nourishing cells called the retinal pigment epithelium. When this support layer fails, it causes macular degeneration and blindness. Doctors have devised a way of building a new retinal pigment epithelium and surgically implanting it into the eye. The technique, published in Nature Biotechnology, starts with embryonic stem cells. These are a special type of cell that can become any other in the human body. They are converted into the type of cell that makes up the retinal pigment epithelium and embedded into a scaffold to hold them in place. The living patch is only one layer of cells thick -- about 40 microns -- and 6mm long and 4mm wide. It is then placed underneath the rods and cones in the back of the eye. The operation takes up to two hours.
Get this guy a hacksaw.
But in all seriousness, that's seriously awesome. Was this wet AMD or dry AMD? Because the description doesn't sound like either one.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
we get some medical breakthroughs. I don't think I can handle another SpaceX, 3D printer, virtual reality, cryptocurrency, or Apple story.
None of these things matter if you can't see.
Mostly random stuff.
Probably.
From their point of view, regaining their sight is worth a lot, but isn't worth sacrificing another human life.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You are aware that embryonic cells can be harvested from the placenta, and mother still delivers colostrum to her living child?
Sorry to burst your drama bubble.
... if that were the case here, then pro-lifers wouldn't have a problem with it, would they?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Also, from skin cells making the entire political debate kinda moot. Some people will never bury the hatchet. Once a term is associated with politics, it'll always live under a shadow. Kinda sucks.
I remember when stem cell therapy was first making the news and getting people excited. It's really nice to read when that sort of basic research pays off with applied medicine. It's seeing the sci-fi books come to you and makes the future look a little more bright.
Also, from skin cells making the entire process ethically viable.
FTFY
"Non-embryonic" is an important distinction and should really be used more. The implication being that no babies were killed in the curing of this disease.
Why can't this be done with pluripotent cells, anyhow?
It probably can.
Embryonic stem cells are mainly about figuring out how these things work - and getting farther back toward the simple states than you can with more differentiated lines.
While some initial treatments (especially on tissues isolated from the immune system) have been, and may still be, tried with them, on the model of transfusions and transplants, the target will always be using the patient's own cells, some cell-bank equivalent, or some other mechanism than harvesting them (destructively) from embryos.
For instance, such treatments could work by taking tissue samples from the patient, by inducing them to "back up" (induced pluripotency) and then re-differentiate into the desired target cell line(s). (Indeed, work on that, for instance starting from fat cells, is already being done.)
Using cells from the patient (absent an autoimmune disease) sidesteps rejection issues. Meanwhile, embryonic stem cell treatments tend to produce cancers, as the too-undifferentiated cell lines get confused about what they're supposed to become.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't think I can handle another SpaceX, 3D printer, virtual reality, cryptocurrency, or Apple story.
Then you probably want to avoid medical-breakthrough stories.
3-D printers are starting to be big in medicine. ...
- Building replacement parts of complex organs by printing tissue scaffolds.
- Ditto by seeding them with stem cells (rather than waiting for the body to infiltrate them) and/or putting the right cells in the right place from the start.
- Making practice models for surgeons, before the surgery on the actual patient.
- Making custom prosthetics, dental appliances, crowns,
(I could go on.)
Face it: Sometimes an invention turns out to have an explosion of applications.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is so many levels of awesome, that I have no other words for it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course they would, because the pro-life set are the stupidist of the stupid.
Then you haven't met any No GMO activists.
Of course, the "A" in "AMD" stands for age-related, which is to say that having half your life ahead of you is pretty rare. Most people who get it do so in their 60s or 70s.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
First off, no-one needs to be beware of anything in this way. There's this little thing called informed consent, which means these patients will have gone through every aspect of these operations with their doctors, including all the risks.
Secondly, how you know the failure rate for an operation that's being reported here for the first time is beyond me.
maybe your wishes are coming true https://www.independent.co.uk/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
We're talking about patients that are well above 70 years. If it lasts 10-15 years, it probably lasts longer than the patient.
There is a reason why cataract operations are done when you're 70. The later you do them, the higher the complication chance and with a life span of about 20 years, the lens will probably last longer than you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So many actually born people want to live and don't get to.
Life ain't fair and it ends in death. Deal with it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Jesus fucking christ. As said elsewhere, they can make stem cells from SKIN CELLS and there's really no need to involve fetuses. This is old news. It's been around for a long time. We have real-world technological solutions to the problems that plague us, BUT NO, some people just can't bury a hatchet and will keep fighting battle well after the war was lost.
Of course for all the good done in the world with medical advancement, there's a few willfully ignorant asshats that make me wonder if humanity is worth saving. When can we engineer this problem away?
Lorien.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes.
Can we start with the living before we try for the unborn?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the "A" in "AMD" stands for age-related, which is to say that having half your life ahead of you is pretty rare. Most people who get it do so in their 60s or 70s
Yeah, well... I'm in my 60s and hell-bent and determined that this is half of my life (you insensitive clod)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
"Embryonic" here is a TYPE of stem cells, it's not describing their origin. They make embryonic stem cells from adult skin cells.
Here you go. They found a way to reprogram adult cells to act like embryonic stem cells. And that's what we want. We want the capabilities. They can induce pluripotent, meaning it can change into a wider selection of different types of cells.
Come on dude.... just... is it not possible to lay down your arms? Just declare victory and walk away. You didn't want a thing to happen and now it doesn't have to, there's no need. Do you really have to keep on with the lashing out and brow beating and calling people murderers?
You're not saving anyone here, by anyone's definition. Is the fight for the fight's sake really more important than:
Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatment is being investigated include:
Diabetes[75]
Rheumatoid arthritis[75]
Parkinson's disease[75]
Alzheimer's disease[75]
Osteoarthritis[75]
Stroke and traumatic brain injury repair[76]
Learning disability due to congenital disorder [77]
Spinal cord injury repair [78]
Heart infarction [79]
Anti-cancer treatments [80]
Baldness reversal[81]
Replace missing teeth [82]
Repair hearing [83]
Restore vision [84] and repair damage to the cornea[85]
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [86]
Crohn's disease [87]
Wound healing [88]
Male infertility due to absence of spermatogonial stem cells [89]
oh fuck. after all that I only now realized I glossed over the bit where, yes, they did use an embryo.
ok. ok, sorry about that.
Lemme rephrase. You can be pissed about this one all you want, but if you wanted the exact same procedure done, you wouldn't have to use any embryo.
I'm actually kinda curious why they didn't just sidestep that whole issue.