Stemcell Therapy Technology News

An eye institute in India has developed a way to grow new corneas from adult stem cells and restore sight to the blind.

By David Ewing Duncan, Fortune
October 24 2007: 6:54 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) -- Eye surgeon Virendar Sangwan has perfected a procedure so cutting-edge that most who have tried it have failed. In an operating theater in the central Indian city of Hyderabad, he surgically implants corneas grown in a petri dish from stem cells by his colleague Geeta Vemuganti in patients with damaged eyes. Together they perform about 80 corneal regeneration procedures a year, making the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute where they work one of the most prolific facilities in the world using stem cells to regenerate tissue of any kind.

The Sangwan-Vemuganti team uses stem cells found in the tissues of living adults, not ones derived from embryos. Teams all over the world are working with adult stem cells, trying to coax them to regrow cells in hearts, brains, livers, and other organs, but progress is slow.

Besides corneas, scientists have had some success regrowing skin cells and bone tissue, but those procedures remain experimental. "A number of programs around the world have tried to perfect this treatment, but they have had bad outcomes," says University of Cincinnati eye surgeon and stem cell specialist Edward Holland.

"It's impressive what they are doing at Prasad." In addition to the Hyderabad project, only Holland's program and a half-dozen others in the world conduct operations using corneas grown from stem cells.

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