StemCell Therapy

Safety first: Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer
of Advanced Cell Technology, says the two patients in an
early stage of a stem-cell study have shown no negative side
effects from the treatment.
Advanced Cell Technology

Eye Study Is a Small but Crucial Advance for Stem-Cell Therapy

The results show that the treatment can be safe, but whether it
can be effective is another question.

• Wednesday, January 25, 2012
• By Karen Weintraub

The first published clinical trial of stem-cell therapy is a
tremendous boon to the company leading the experiment—but it's
only a small step forward for the field.

In a paper published this week in The Lancet,
scientists from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and from Advanced Cell
Technology^[1], in
Marlborough, Massachusetts, reported that two patients each
safely received injections of embryonic stem cells into an eye.

Stem-cell research in patients suffered a major blow recently,
when one leading company, Geron^[2],
pulled out of a
pioneering spinal cord repair study^[3]. The
new study is more limited in scope, focusing on treatment that
is easier to study and less problematic.  

The new study was written three months after treating the
patients, both of whom have degenerative eye diseases and
limited sight. Another three months has now passed, and
Robert
Lanza^[4], chief
scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology, says both are
still doing well, with no apparent side effects.

Lanza says Advanced Cell Technology would not commercialize the
work itself, but would look to partner with a company that
would.

The intent of the study was to show that the treatment is safe,
not to look at its effectiveness. But Lanza, the paper, and a
related commentary also published in The Lancet all
cited the women's reports of benefits from the procedure. One
woman's vision improved enough to see a hand waved in front of
her face; the other climbed from 20/500 to 20/320 on an eye
chart.

Kevin
Eggan^[5], an
associate professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at
Harvard University, says he's surprised that The
Lancet published such preliminary results, and that
scientists are talking about the treatment's effectiveness at
such an early stage of research.

References

1. ^{^} Advanced Cell Technology
   (www.advancedcell.com)
2. ^{^} Geron
   (www.geron.com)
3. ^{^} pulled out of a pioneering spinal
   cord repair study
   (www.technologyreview.com)
4. ^{^} Robert Lanza
   (www.advancedcell.com)
5. ^{^} Kevin Eggan
   (www.mcb.harvard.edu)