StemCell Therapy

CIRM funds many projects seeking to better understand diseases of blindness and to translate those discoveries into new therapies.

Nearly a million Americans are blind, with another 2.4 million suffering significant visual impairment. While there are several causes of blindness, the leading cause of all visual impairment is age-related macular degeneration, which affects 1.7 million Americans.

Californias stem cell agency funds research into potential therapies for three of the causes of blindness. All the research teams are seeking to use various forms of stem cells to rescue or replace cells in the eye damaged or threatened by the diseases. Several groups are working on ways to restore vision for people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Other projects are looking to preserve vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa, and to restore clarity to the surface of eyes impacted by corneal disease.

In AMD the layer of cells that support the photoreceptors is destroyed. Without this support system, the photoreceptors, the cells that actually allow us to sense light start to malfunction. CIRM-funded teams are looking at various methods of replacing this layer of support cells called RPE (retinal pigment epithelial) cells. Some are using embryonic stem cells as a starting point to generate new RPE cells. Others are using stem cells obtained by reprogramming adult cells to be like embryonic cells, which could potentially come from the patients themselves.

Retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited and progressive vision loss that leaves most patients legally blind by mid-life, directly destroys the photoreceptors. CIRM-funded researchers are seeking to use stem cells to rescue the receptors from further damage and potentially replace them with new ones.

The cornea, the outer surface of the eye, is constantly refreshed by stem cells that reside in neighboring tissue. But some people just dont have enough of these stem cells, called Limbal stem cells, to make enough new cornea cells. CIRM-funded researcher are trying to correct this condition, limbal stem cell deficiency, by retrieving the few existing limbal stem cells, and using various techniques to expand them in the laboratory until there are enough cells to rebuild a healthy cornea.

Some projects we fund are trying to take promising therapies out of the laboratory and closer to being tested in people. These Disease Team Awards encourage the creation of teams that have both the scientific knowledge and business skills needed to produce therapies that can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be tested in people. In some cases, these awards also fund the early phase clinical trials to show that they are safe to use and, in some cases, show some signs of being effective.

This team is using embryonic stem cells to produce the support cells, or RPE cells, needed to replace those lost in AMD. Because these cells exist in a thin sheet in the back of the eye, they are assembling these sheets in the lab by growing the RPE cells on synthetic scaffolds. These sheets are then surgically implanted into the eye. They are testing the human embryonic stem cell-derived RPE cells in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial to treat the advanced dry form of AMD.

For retinitis pigmentosa, the team is using donor tissue to isolate cells that are part way down the path from neural stem cells to adult eye tissue. These retinal progenitor cells are grown in large quantities in the lab and then injected into the eye. The team suggests the cells could help in two ways. They may be able to protect the photoreceptors not yet damaged by the disease, and they may be able to form new photoreceptors to replace those already lost. The team is testing the safety of transplantinghuman retinal progenitor cells into patients with RP in a phase 1/2 clinical trial.

The same team from UC Irvine is now conducting a Phase 2b clinical trial for retinitis pigmentosa using the same stem cell derived retinal progenitor celltherapy. The trial, which is sponsored by the company jCyte, will test the treatment in a larger patient population to determine whether the treatment is effective at restoring some vision.After finishing patient enrollment, the team willconductpatient follow up studies and collectof all clinical outcome measures.

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See the article here:
Blindness Fact Sheet | California's Stem Cell Agency

This entry was posted on June 8, 2017 at 1:42 am and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |