Pigs raise hopes for blindness cure - Telegraph

 

"The results are really encouraging," says Prof Coffey. "We plan to do the first patient within three years."

Using surgical instruments introduced through three one millimetre holes in the eye, the team goes under the retina, a translucent layer, then inflate it so it separates from the underlying cells.

The human eye cells derived from embryonic cells were then introduced on a rolled up patch and injected through a one millimetre hole, where the patch of human cells unfolded under the retina.

"I was over the moon when I got the results because it is a proof of concept," says Prof Coffey. "We really can do it."

Although the implanted human cells are black, the same as the surrounding pig cells, they can be distinguished when light of a given colour is shone into the eye. The human cells glowed when viewed this way under the gaze of an instrument called a scanning laser opthalmoscope. "That indicates good function," says Prof Coffey.

The operation on three sighted pigs took only 30 minutes, suggesting the stem cell implants could eventually become a routine outpatient operation, they told an event backed by the company Mostra at the Globe Theatre to promote the London Project to Cure Blindness - a scientific initiative between UCL, Moorfields and The University of Sheffield.

Pigs raise hopes for blindness cure - Telegraph

 

Technorati Tags: macular degeneration

Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough

 

The treatment involved weakening the patient's immune system, then giving the recipient bone marrow from the person who donated the organ. In one experiment, four of five kidney recipients were off immune-suppressing medicines up to five years later.

"There's reason to hope these patients will be off drugs for the rest of their lives," said Dr. David Sachs of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the research published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Since the world's first transplant more than 50 years ago, scientists have searched for ways to trick the body to accept a foreign organ as its own. Immune-suppressing drugs that prevent organ rejection came into wide use in the 1980s. But they raise the risk of cancer, kidney failure and many other problems. And they have unpleasant side effects such as excessive hair growth, bloating and tremors.
Eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs is "a huge advance," said Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, a University of Louisville immunology specialist who had no role in the work.
"It still needs some fine-tuning so that everyone who gets treated gets the same consistent outcome ... It's not the holy grail of tolerance yet," she cautioned.

Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough

Technorati Tags: Organ Transplants,immune system