A novel approach to enabling age related macular degeneration patients to restore their sight has been discovered using stem cells. The future of eye care has arrived. Many researches have been conducted with injecting stem cells into the eye. These methods in the various animal studies have shown to delay the progress of the condition called age related macular degeneration or AMD or ARMD.

Age related macular degeneration is a relatively common condition, which is predominantly found in the elderly affecting 30 million people worldwide. Quarter of the over-60s in the UK and more than half of the over-75s suffer from this condition. It is a hugely prevalent condition and is one of the concerns for many ophthalmologists. In this condition the macula undergoes thinning and atrophy. Thus resulting in the loss of central vision. In fact AMD is one of the leading causes of central vision loss, which entails the inability to see fine details, read and to recognise faces. Macular degeneration can also occur in some young patients. 

Degenerative diseases such as AMD may be treatable by transplantation of healthy fetal cells. However, obtaining a sufficient number of suitable donor cells remains a problem as it raises a lot of ethical issues. The demand is also often much more than the number of donors.  Therefore the usage of human embryonic cells has come into play.

Dr Raymond D Lund and his team in Utah, US have conducted studies into the usage of embryonic stem cells to replace the retinal pigment epithelium. Embryonic cells have the potential to generate all adult cell types hence enabling to treat ocular diseases resulting from the failure of specific cell types would be potentially treatable through the transplantation of differentiated cells derived from embryonic stem cells. These cells can proliferate indefinitely in their undifferentiated state and are expected to alleviate the problem of the shortage of donor cells for cell-replacement therapy.

The animal studies conducted by Dr Lund and his team show a significant improvement in visual function. The cells were injected into the sub- retinal space of rats with retinal disease. The cells survived long-term (>100days) after transplantation and localised to the sub retinal space without migration into the retina. There was a marked improvement in visual acuity compared to the untreated rat models (controls). Visual acuity was approximately 70% that of normal non- dystrophic rats.

The above procedure does create a new path for the treatment of AMD however these studies have all been conducted on animals. There has not been much research into how this would affect human visual performance. A lot of research is now being conducted in Moorfields hospital, London that could shed further light into this procedure.  Therefore a lot more research is required before this becomes a treatment option for patients. Stem cells might be a possible cure for degenerative diseases such an AMD only time will tell.

1. Raymond D Lund, Shaomei Wang, Irina Klimanskaya, Toby Holmes, Rebeca Ramos-Kelsey, Bin Lu, Sergej Girman N, Bischoff, Yves Sauve and Robert Lanza, Human embryonic stem cell-derived cells rescue visual function in dystrophic RCS rats, Cloning and stem cells, volume 8, number 3, 2006.