Stem Cell Jabs Can Cure Eye Disorder

BRITISH doctors have used a new stem cell treatment to restore the vision of people with a rare eye disorder.

The technique could help 5,000 Britons and thousands more worldwide.

A team at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex, worked on sufferers of the inherited disorder aniridia.

Victims have no irises the coloured part of the eye and suffer a shortage of ‘limbal stem cells’, a type of stem cell found under the eyelid which helps protect the surface of the eye.

Without them, vision can be damaged or lost.

The scientists grew human stem cells from dead donors, patients themselves or relatives in a laboratory and transplanted them into the eye.

There they helped trigger the production of enough limbal stem cells to restore normal sight.

Eye surgeon Sheraz Daya said: ‘What we have discovered is quite remarkable.’

He said that if donor cells could trigger stem cell growth in eyes, they could also work in organs such as the liver and pancreas.

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