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Summary
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agreed to the conduction of a second round of experiments on embryonic stem cell transplantation into patients eyes that suffer from Stargardt's macular degeneration. The research on stem cell therapy had already discovered treatments for instance to increase female fertility is heavily opposed by the Roman Catholic Church as eliminating potential living human beings. The researchers underline the potential ability of the method to cure blindness for many patients. Tests on animals already delivered high success rates of 100% improvement of rats eye sights. Stargardt's disease can so far not be cured and leads to extreme vision loss of mostly young-aged patients. The approval of the second test rounds has been debated over a long period and finally reached an agreement. My guess is that we could start in as soon as two to three months, Lanza highlights. One year ago, the company had filed an application for a new drug with the Food and Drug Administration, to use the retinal cells from the human embryonic stem cells to treat patients with a rare genetic disorder that affects nearly 30,000 Americans.Severe Stargardt results in a syndrome called progressive vision loss that starts in 10 to 20-year-old patients and can lead to blindness. According to co-researcher Kaushal, The current standard of care in the disease is simply to follow patients, since there are not drugs or treatments to reverse the vision loss.Its a largely unmet medical need, in terms of therapeutics. Patients will be cautioned that the initial trial is preliminary and primarily a test of the safety of the treatment.In the disease, retinal cells that are the photographic film of the eye degenerate and photo-receptors that sense light also die, he said.As part of the trial, retinal cells will be injected inside the patient's eye, along with various doses and then researchers will observe these people for safety and efficiency of the stem cell treatment.Robert Lanza concluded, Though the trial is designed primarily to assess safety, the first signs of visual improvement may be apparent within weeks. Talking to the clinicians, we could see something in six weeks, that's when we think we may see some improvements.It really depends on individual patients but that's a reasonable time frame when something may start to happen.
