EYE TISSUE TO BE GROWN TO ORDER

The first Australian trials of a new transplant technique for victims of eye injuries or burns are expected to take place in Queensland later this year. The trials at Royal Brisbane Hospital will involve transplanting specialised “skin grafts for the eye”, artificially grown in the laboratory from the patient’s own tissue.

The result will be perfectly compatible corneas that will initially be used to overcome some of the problems associated with traditional corneal transplants.

Ultimately, however, the new procedure using "grown to order" tissue might replace altogether conventional transplants, which use tissue from unrelated donors.

The cornea is a form of specialised skin, which is transparent, sits directly over the lens and acts as the “window” to the eye.
Traditional grafts from cadavers are a good solution when a patient’s own cornea is damaged, but 40 per cent of grafts fail over a 10 year period, says Dr Damien Harkin, a cell biologist from Queensland University of Technology who is involved in the proposed trials.

The surface layer of the transplanted cornea breaks down and the surrounding tissue, known as conjunctiva, starts to invade the eye’s surface. This not only impairs vision, but “looks terrible and feels terrible”, says Dr Harkin.

To help these patients, surgeons would take a tiny piece of healthy cornea from a patient’s undamaged eye, thought to contain “master” cells called stem cells. These cells would be grown in the laboratory onto special membranes to form a layer, which would then be transplanted onto the surface of the damaged eye after the failed cornea transplant was scraped off.

Once in place, the new layer should grow into specialised corneal cells that “hold back” the growth of the surrounding tissue.
“Our aim is to stabilise the eye’s surface and to ease the discomfort, pain and suffering of people with this problem,” Dr Harkin said. “If they had any improvement in vision, which is a possibility, that would be a real bonus.”

If the technique proves a success, it could also be used on patients with eye damage considered too severe for a conventional transplant.

Source of the given news and the copyrights belong to a ABC Online News

Back