A new procedure to help people with damaged corneas is showing promise in three patients so far. A team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney takes stem cells from the patient's good eye and cultures them in a contact lens. When the cells have multiplied, they place the lens over the patient's affected eye and leave it for around three weeks. During that time, the cells begin to grow into the damaged cornea and help regenerate it. In effect, it's a stem cell transplant from one eye to the other.
Link -via Digg
Researcher Dr Nick Di Girolamo said: 'The procedure is totally simple and cheap.
'Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.
'There's no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.'
The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.
The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.
Link -via Digg
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See, this is decent. A day barely seems to go by where I don't hear about technology being used to entertain or amuse us, especially in the contact lenses field, so it's refreshing to see contact lens technology being used to fight something as life-destroying as loss of vision. For now, I'll stick to discussing cosmetic styles at my blog http://tophalloweencontactlenses.blogspot.com/, but I may consider starting a blog for the way technology and lenses are coming together (it's probably more interesting).
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It's a pity with all the furor over embryonic stem cell research that more people aren't aware of medical advances like this made via adult stem cell research. My husband's type of leukemia is now treatable because of such research.
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Woohoo!! Go, Stem Cells! Marvelous things.
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