Stem cell restores eyesight: reports...

Scientists have been able to restore vision in blind rabbits by creating eye tissue from human stem cells, Stem cells are a class of undifferentiated cells that are able to differentiate into specialized cell types.

 

Commonly, stem cells come from two main sources:
Embryos formed during the blastocyst phase of embryological development (embryonic stem cells) and Adult tissue (adult stem cells) development that could lead to human trials to help restore vision
within the next two years.

Researchers from the Cardiff University and Osaka University in Japan concur to grow multiple different cells similar to those found in the eye. They created the cells to be similar to cells in the cornea, and were able to surgically repair the front of the eye in a blind rabbits.
The scientists behind the work say the sucess could lead to clinical human trials of anterior eye transplantation to restore loss of damaged vision.

Andrew Quantock from Cardiff University, who coauthored the work, explained that the research -- published in the journal Nature -- shows that human stem cells are able to take on the characteristics
of the cornea, lens and retina.

We've been using human iPS cells-which are induced pluripotent stem cells --growing them in a 2D culture dish.

Spontaneously after several weeks, the cells create four zones on their own, Quantock told WIRED. Each zone has the molecular characteristics of a different part of the eye.
We took cells from the third zone, which most looks like the corneal epithelium, and grew them further out before transferring them onto the animal model, which was functional and worked."
The scientists were able to show that the corneal cells could be cultivated and transplanted onto the eyes of "rabbits with experimentally induced blindness" to repair the front of the eye.