Stem cells dry eye anyone else see this

[Tanner]

http://www.schepens.harvard.edu/mind...itiatives.html

Do any of you know about this or have info?

[jenny2008]

i recall an article about a year or so again in Tufts Journal re: this. i would have to look around my desk for it and i am kinda un organized at the moment..that is great tho. you would think with everything else they can really help dry eyes would be one of them.

[littlemermaid]

http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2010/05_1/features/04/ 'Not a Dry Eye. Stem cells could be used to repair damaged salivary and tear-producing glands', Jacqueline Mitchell, Tufts Journal, May 5 2010.
http://www.iovs.org/content/49/10/4399.full.pdf Mechanisms of murine [mouse] lacrimal gland repair after experimentally induced inflammation, Driss Zoukhri, Amanda Fix, Joseph Alroy, and Claire L. Kublin, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science October 2008.

Plenty more good stuff reported in IOVS journal, including some big research grants on this. Also other inflammation pathways in the eye and related (to try to trace and regulate the dysfunction).

Thanks so much Tanner and Jenny2008.

Just googled 'stem cell cornea' and found amazing research in progress around the world. Opaque corneas have already been restored to clarity in people by putting stem cells in the limbus (join of clear and white parts where the immune response happens then spreads across the clear part), ie reversing programmed cell death or apoptosis (cell change) across the cornea.

Also, the response to inflammation processes that damage the glands (lacrimal, salivary) to malfunction in programmed cell death or apoptosis is being reversed (in animals) by stem cells by the Tufts team in the article above, search PubMed 'Zoukhri'.

Same with the retina (human trials started, people seeing better), search 'stem cell eye' for breaking news.

The sources of stem cells are various (eg cornea surface grown off amniotic membrane with donor cells from the other eye, Newcastle, UK). I think there's some problems with rejecting host mutated mitochondrial DNA etc and even induced dry eye (see Rebecca's blog 19 Jan, Keio University) in other parts of the body, but:

'Ben Sykes is executive director of UK National Stem Cell Network... 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." ' http://www.webmd.boots.com/eye-healt...trial-approved

How cool, and promising for us, is that. Good to be able to get excited about some rockin' science.

[cvowr]

Hello all,

I am a student of Masters Degree in Botany. Unfortunately I have dry eye due to accident with UVC germicidal lamp (ultraviolet type C). My quality of life has deteriorated a lot and maybe I need to stop the Masters Degree. I am also seriously thinking about continuing my studies with cell therapy / stem cells. However, I am very discouraged and my knowledge of English is very limited, mainly to deal with a new area. However, the film Lorenzo's Oil, though somewhat fanciful, gave me new energy to move in this direction. But before that, I need to do an intensive English course in some English-speaking country. I think six months will be sufficient.


Well, back to the topic of cell therapy and stem cells, there is hardly anything about it, even because the etiologies of dry eye are quite distinct and virtually all types of dry eye are poorly understood. We are a very heterogeneous group, and this is one of the reasons we are largely neglected on the prospects of cell therapy. I think that the potential primary beneficiaries of stem cells are people who have had some kind of damage to the eye, as I and other people who did some type of eye surgery (Lasic and others).

I suspect that in many cases, problems with