Article 16J35 Childhood cataracts repaired using stem cells

Childhood cataracts repaired using stem cells

by
Diana Gitig
from Ars Technica - All content on (#16J35)
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(credit: Khan AO, Aldahmesh MA, Ghadhfan FE, Al-Mesfer S, Alkuraya FS)

Cataracts-the clouding of the lens in our eyes-are the leading cause of blindness in the world. Though we often associate them with the elderly, they're also a major cause of vision loss in infants, especially in the developing world. In either case, they are dealt with surgically, by removing the entire lens and replacing it with either a transplanted lens or an artificial one.

More than twenty million people undergo this surgery annually, but it often comes with a host of complications, and children in particular usually still need glasses afterward. But now some researchers have shown that it's possible to skip the replacement lens and get stem cells to repair the damage, a procedure that results in fewer complications.

Researchers in China noticed that the eye contains lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells (LECs) that continue to divide, even in forty-year-old adults. Injury can stimulate them to grow into three-dimensional, transparent, light refracting, lens-like structures. Rather than using artificial lenses, these researchers thought, maybe they could get infants to regrow their own new lenses.

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