Surgeons at Osaka University tried growing replacement tissue from banked donor cells, reprogrammed into stem cells and coaxed into the thin, clear layer that covers the eye.
Four adults with damaged corneas received sheets of the lab-grown tissue in a first-in-human trial. Over 52 weeks there were 26 adverse events, mostly mild, and no tumors or rejection. All four eyes showed less clouding and sharper vision, two of them markedly so.
None of the four developed cancer or rejected the graft, the two risks that make stem-cell transplants risky. Two patients did better than the other two, a gap the team could not fully explain. A larger trial is the next step, and the result still applies only to the cornea's outer layer, not the deeper eye.
Read the original study
Soma et al., Lancet, 2024 · doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01764-1
Reprogrammed cells rebuilt a cornea's surface.
Source
- Soma, T., Oie, Y., Takayanagi, H., Matsubara, S., Yamada, T., Nomura, M., Yoshinaga, Y., Maruyama, K., Watanabe, A., Takashima, K., Mao, Z., Quantock, A. J., Hayashi, R., & Nishida, K. (2024). Induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived corneal epithelium for transplant surgery: a single-arm, open-label, first-in-human interventional study in Japan. The Lancet, 404(10466), 1929–1939. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01764-1