Japanese researchers on Friday conducted the world’s first surgery to implant induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in a human body in a major boost to regenerative medicine, two institutions involved said.
A patient in her 70s with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common condition that can lead to blindness in older people, had implanted a sheet of retinal cells that had been created from iPS cells.
“It is the first time in the world that iPS cells have been transplanted into a human body,” a spokeswoman for Riken, one of the research institutions, said.
Photo: AFP
The research team used iPS cells — which have the potential to develop into any cell in the body — that had originally come from the skin of the patient.
Until the discovery of iPS several years ago, the only way to obtain stem cells was to harvest them from human embryos.
“We feel very much relieved,” ophthalmologist Masayo Takahashi, the leader of the project at Riken, told a news conference after the surgery in Kobe. “We want to take it as a big step forward, but we must go on and on from here.”
Photo: AFP
The surgery is experimental, but if it is successful, doctors hope it will stop the deterioration in vision that comes with AMD.
The patient — one of six expected to take part in the trial — is to be monitored for four years to determine how the implants perform and whether they become cancerous.
AMD, a condition that is incurable at present, affects mostly middle-aged and older people and can lead to blindness. About 700,000 people in Japan alone have been diagnosed.
The study is being carried out by researchers from Japanese government-backed research institution Riken and the Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation Hospital.
Stem cell research has excited many with the potential they believe it offers. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can develop into any part of the body.
Work done in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, a Nobel Laureate in medicine last year, generated stem cells from adult skin tissue.
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