A 40-year-old Japanese woman is the first person in the
world to have her cornea repaired using reprogrammed stem cells, according to Nature.
Ophthalmologist Kohji Nishida from Osaka University, Japan,
said the woman has a disease in which the stem cells that repair the cornea, a
transparent layer that covers and protects the eye, are lost. The condition
makes vision blurry and can lead to blindness.
To treat the woman, Nishida says his team created sheets of
corneal cells from induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells.
These are made by reprogramming adult skin cells from a
donor into an embryonic-like state from which they can transform into other
cell types, such as corneal cells.
Nishida said that the woman’s cornea remained clear and her
vision had improved since the transplant a month ago.
Currently, people with damaged or diseased corneas are
generally treated using tissue from donors who have died, but there is a long
waiting list for such tissue in Japan.
Japan has been ahead of the curve in approving the clinical
use of iPS cells, which were discovered by stem-cell biologist Shinya Yamanaka
at Kyoto University, who won a Nobel prize for the work. Japanese physicians
have also used iPS cells to treat spinal cord injury and Parkinson's disease
among others.
