Treatment of macular degeneration: another proof of ESC security

Korean biotechnologists have confirmed the safety
treatment of retinal dystrophy using stem cells

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

Scientists from the Korean company CHA Biotech introduced cells of the supporting retinal tissue, which were obtained from human embryonic stem cells, into the eyes of four men with macular degeneration of the retina. Three of them had an improvement in vision a year after the procedure, the fourth patient did not change in general, reports The Scientist (Kate Yandell, Eye Stem Cell Therapy Moves Ahead – VM).

The results of this study are published in the April issue of Stem Cell Reports (Won Kyung Song et al., Treatment of Macular Degeneration Using Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Retinal Pigment Epithelium: Preliminary Results in Asian Patients, publicly available – VM) and indicate the permissibility and even expediency of injections of cellular drugs derived from stem cells, with retinal degeneration. This work was preceded by two publications in The Lancet in 2014 and 2012, the authors of which are the same group of researchers from Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (now it is called Ocata Therapeutics) under the scientific leadership of Robert Lanza, they reported on the safety of the method of seeding the space behind the retina with cells grown from human embryonic stem cells so that they replace the dead photosensitive cells, photoreceptors.

It is the absence of active photoreceptors that characterizes various types of macular degeneration – a disease in which nerve cells of the most important central part of the retina, the so-called macular spot, or macula, die. The Korean company conducted a new study with the assistance of Massachusetts-based Ocata Therapeutics, which provided human embryonic stem cell lines and gave some guidelines.

A stem cell specialist from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, Jeanne Loring, in a comment for The Scientist, noted that with all the obvious safety of the method, it is difficult to draw unambiguous conclusions about its effectiveness based on such a limited study. Like many other research groups developing stem cell-based therapies, scientists led by Ocata have turned to eye diseases in part because of the accessibility of the organs of vision. In the described study, they treated two men – 65 and 79 years old – with the so-called "dry" form of age-related macular degeneration and two more, 40 and 45 years old, with Stargardt dystrophy, hereditary macular degeneration, which affects at a young age.

CHA Biotech hopes to get permission from the Korean regulatory authorities to conduct a larger and placebo-controlled second phase of clinical trials of Stargardt macular degeneration cell therapy this year.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru 13.05.2015