Stem Cell Therapy for AMD

In this developing world, one of the leading causes of blindness is age-associated macular degeneration (AMD) and macular dystrophy. Macular degeneration can either be wet macular degeneration or dry, in nature. Although, there are some macular degeneration treatment options available out there, but there is no complete cure, especially for wet macular degeneration. However, just like other degenerative diseases, the scope of stem cell therapy has also extended to this disease as well. Researchers are now carrying out clinical tests to create tolerable as well as safe transplantation RPE (retinal pigment epithelium) derived from stem cells. These tests and studies have shown promising result, as differentiation of embryonic stem cells under controlled conditions gave 99 percent pure retinal pigment epithelium. The patients who have been tried with such stem cell therapy did not face any severe complications, such as vision loss, and have also shown improvement in the condition of macular degeneration. One of the advantages of using human embryonic cells for macular degeneration treatment is that these cells prevented any kind of tumorigenicity, hyper proliferation, rejection or formation of ectopic tissues. Researchers now aim at using stem cell therapy therapeutically in the earlier stage of macular degeneration, which can help in rescuing central vision loss in the early stage only.

Safety is one of the main concerns of surgeons while administering stem cell therapy while replacing the cells present in the eye, which are either missing or damaged. The method of delivering these cells to the eye is another matter of concern. In one of the methods, patches of retinal pigment epithelium cells are used for delivering the cells. This has shown good result in some of the tests carried out by researchers, as the newly introduced cells showed stability and did not wander to other areas. Surgeons are also testing another method which uses an injection of suspension of stem cells. The cells are injected to the area under retina. The cells that are injected are extracted either from RPE cells, or induced pluripotent cells, or embryonic stem cells. These are the differentiated in controlled lab conditions and are placed on a fluid is harmless to the eye and are finally injected to the affected area of the eye.


If the present RPE cells of the patient support the new cells, then such a stem cell therapy can change the face of macular degeneration treatment and can help patients tackle with it more effectively. 

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