A Visionary Approach Using Stem Cells to Repair Eye Damage
New eye research center in India aims to fix visual impairments with
the help of stem cells
By Larry Greenemeier
STEM CELL RESEARCH at the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad,
India, involves the generation of reparative tissue in the
laboratory, which is used to replace damaged or diseased tissue.
Courtesy of the LV Prasad Eye Institute
A new vision research center opening in India today becomes the
latest in a handful of facilities dedicated to exploring the
potential of adult eye stem cells to repair vision damage. The
Champalimaud Center for Translation Eye Research (C-TRACER), part of
the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India, will continue
research begun by LV Prasad scientists, who use eye stem cells from
living adults to grow new cells that are then implanted into damaged
The center's goal is to restore vision to some portion of the 65
million people worldwide—about 1 percent of the world population—
considered to be legally blind, which the National Federation of the
Blind defines as a central visual acuity of 20 / 200 or less in the
stronger eye, even when aided by a corrective lens. Especially in
developing countries in Africa and Asia, "most of these people are
needlessly blind," says D. Balasubramanian, research director for
both LV Prasad and the new facility.
Some of these people have vision problems caused by currently
untreatable diseases, he notes, but others simply because they cannot
afford or do not have access to relatively simple fixes such as
surgery to remove cataracts (clouding of eye lenses).
Balasubramanian says the research center, which is being funded by
the philanthropic Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, will be critical
to improving eye care in his country where an estimated 15 million
people suffer from eyesight woes, many of them genetic. "Hundreds of
millions of Indians marry within their community," says
Balasubramanian, a former director of the Center for Cellular and
Molecular Biology and dean of the University of Hyderabad. "So there
is a lot of inherited blindness that is gene-derived. Almost one in
every 4,000 live births in India [for example] seems to produce
congenital glaucoma."
Among the disorders that Balasubramanian has targeted is retinitis
pigmentosa, a group of inherited diseases that cause degeneration of
the retina (in the back of the eye where millions of photoreceptors
capture light rays that the brain turns into images). "There is no
cure for this and it is certainly a genetic disease," he says. People
with retinitis pigmentosa experience a gradual decline in their
vision because the eye's photoreceptor cells slowly die off.
C-TRACER researchers are trained to think in terms of the full cycle
of developing treatments—from laboratory to operating room to
clinical rehabilitation, or, as Balasubramanian says, "from bench to
bedside." One example of this research is the practice of using stem
cells taken from a healthy eye's limbus, the area around the cornea
where stem cells are stored, to create a layer of healthy cells to
replace damaged ones in the cornea, the transparent, dome-shaped
layer of cells covering the front of the eye. Ophthalmologists do
this by creating a patch of cells from a surgically removed slice of
the limbus and stitching it to the damaged cornea. Similar limbal
stem cell transplant work has been done by physicians at the
University of Melbourne's Center for Eye Research Australia and the
Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery in Fitzroy, Australia.
Although the stem cell approach was not invented at LV Prasad, the
institute has treated about 500 patients with a success rate of
nearly 75 percent, Balasubramanian says. C-TRACER and LV Prasad has
also tuned its work to pay particular attention to the genetic
conditions that lead to visual impairment. C-TRACER will open with a
staff of five scientists, 22 graduate students and six clinical
researchers. The facility occupies 16,000 square feet (1,485 square
meters) on the LV Prasad institute's fifth floor, but plans are to
expand to 25,000 square feet (2,320 square meters) by 2009.
Champalimaud-
related disease and illness in Portugal, Portuguese-speaking
countries and throughout the developing world. The four-year-old
foundation also offers a $1.48 million (1 million euro) Champalimaud
Vision Award annually to researchers who have provided "major
breakthroughs in the understanding of vision or in the alleviation of
visual impairment and blindness," says foundation executive committee
member João Botelho.
This year, the foundation will further its philanthropic medical
research support by breaking ground on the Champalimaud Center for
the Unknown, a Lisbon research center slated to open in October 2010
and serve as the foundation's international headquarters.
In addition to the funds that LV Prasad received from Champalimaud to
create C-TRACER, the institute will also receive $1 million in
funding over the next five years from the Indian Ministry of Science
& Technology's Department of Biotechnology.
http://www.sciam.
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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