Stem cell eye treatment trial approved

23rd September 2011 - Treatment of medical conditions with stem cells may offer some of the biggest breakthroughs in recent years - but doctors are cautious about building up patients' hopes of new therapies being widely available soon.

A small scale trial is planned of a new treatment for young people with an inherited eye condition called Stargardt disease, which is up to now has been untreatable.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre based at Moorfields and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology received special approval for the trial from the regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Retinal cells

The trial will investigate the safety of using retinal cells derived from embryo stem cells to treat people with advanced Stargardt disease, a form of macular degeneration which leads to a loss of sight.

The injection of retinal stem cells will take up to an hour.

In a statement, retinal surgeon Professor James Bainbridge who'll be conducting the trials at Moorfields says: "There is real potential that people with blinding disorders of the retina, including Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration, might benefit in the future from transplantation of retinal cells."

Retinal cells have been regenerated in the laboratory, now he says there's the opportunity to translate the technology into treatments for patients, which he says is "hugely exciting".

The stem cell technology has been developed by a US company, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), which has been running similar trials in the US.

UK stem cell research

Ben Sykes is executive director of UK National Stem Cell Network, an independent national body set up to promote research into stem cell science. He tells us the eyes are a good starting place for stem cell studies as there's less chance of rejection: "It was always going to be one of the organs in which we'd see the first stem cell based therapies coming through for clinical trial. Another example would be the spinal cord.

"When you put in cells that are not the patient's own cells, they don't get attacked by the immune system."

The UK is involved in fewer stem cells trials than countries like America, but there have been some successes.

In March 2010, a 10-year-old British boy became the first child to have a pioneering windpipe transplant operation in a procedure carried out at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. A donated trachea had the donor’s cells removed, leaving inert collagen. The child‘s bone marrow stem cells were collected and added to the trachea to start the process of rebuilding it.

In November 2010, doctors at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital injected neural stem cells into the brain of an elderly stroke patient in a ground breaking clinical trial aimed at finding a new treatment for the condition.

However, Sykes points out that stem cell treatments are nothing new: "Bone marrow stem cell transplants have been with us for 50 years on the NHS. It's easy to forget that that is a stem cell transplant."