There is a new technique currently being tested to restore vision in those suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with stem cells.
Over the course of 18 months, 10 patients will undergo the treatment at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The first patient in the UK received the emperimental treatment earlier this year and doctors will know if it was successful in restoring her vision by December 2015.
The process involves growing new eye cells, called retinal pigment epithelium, from stem cells in a lab and forming a patch that can be placed behind the retina during surgery.
“It does involve an operation, but we’re trying to make it as straightforward as a cataract operation,” said Professor Pete Coffey of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. “It will probably take 45 minutes to an hour. We could treat a substantial number of those patients.”
As many as 15 million people in the U.S. are estimated to suffer from macular degeneration, which causes about half the vision loss worldwide, generally in people over the age of 50. The current processes only treats wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects only about 10 percent of patients with AMD. Doctors expect to eventually restore vision for those with dry AMD, which is the majority of sufferers, in the future.