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A new study has begun into stem cell treatments for retinal blindness diseases like Stargardt and Age Related Macular Degeneration. Following approval from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, the Moorfields research centres around the use of retinal cells to safely treat theses conditions.
Stargardt disease (fundus flavimaculatus), an inherited progressive vision loss disorder and AMD (age-related macular degeneration), a condition resulting in lost sight due to retinal damage, affect different age categories with the former found in younger patients where the latter is more prone to adults. Both conditions lead to visual impairment and a patient becoming registered blind. Both also focus on macular degeneration of some form, the loss of eye sight in the centre of the patients visual field. Although the obvious disabilities arise, one notable other problem can arise in the form of being unable to recognise faces or face blindness.
The focus of the study is to investigate the ability to use retinal cells derived from stem cells in patients with these eye related disorders. With the ability to regenerate retinal cells in a laboratory in this way, the testing process is very much to trial the safety of this transplantation procedure. The hope is that these clinical trials will be able to lead to new treatments for these diseases that ideally cure the conditions but certainly show a progression towards treating them more effectively and improving the patients vision.