Woman is first to receive cornea made from ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells | Hacker News Reader

Woman is first to receive cornea made from ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells

nature.com

88 pointsbookofjoe11 comments

My first corneal transplant, in 1993, involved literally waiting for someone appropriate to die, and going into a major operation with a few days' notice. By 1998, when I had my other cornea transplanted, NZ had a well-established cornea bank, a steady supply of donor corneas stored (short term) and ready for whoever needed one next, and so I was able to choose the time in advance.

Any improvements to this process and these kinds of procedure will be very beneficial.

Corneas are comparatively easy to transplant, as they have no blood supply (oxygenated through tears), so there are few rejection problems and no immunosuppression drugs needed long term. That means this kind of stem cell approach is probably mostly useful when there are supply issues, as the article implies, rather than for compatibility reasons.

My SO had her first corneal transplant done at Moorfield (UK) about 8 years ago, and the second in Sydney (AU) earlier this year - in both cases it's astonishing how fast the eye adapts, especially given there's stitches holding the thing in, and they stay in for twelve months and are then removed - ie. not dissolving thread.

Specifically, she had better than contact lens corrected over the previous state within a month or two.

Actually, equal parts astonishing and depressing, given my eyesight (after several decades spent staring at screens) is guaranteed to get worse, not better, from here on out.

Skin cells DNA should be among the most damaged by the time we need replacement organs no? Surely there is a better source of pluripotent stem cells?

I didn't see the name of the disease. Is this for severe Keratoconus or something else?

_edit_

Seems to be Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency.

Any information on the state of the patient’s vision both pre and post-op?

If you’re going from, let’s assume, blindness, to now full vision: how does your visual cortex move from dormant to active? Is it jarring?

Of topic a bit but I recently watched some youtube videos about people hearing for the first time, I was surprised how instant things appear to be. Thinking about it you have baby animals that can just walk after a few minutes at tbirth so it makes sense that most of the basic mechanism are pre-programmed before birth.

There are a couple of stories of people born blind/deaf that choose to revert an operation that restores their senses because they find it too "confusing" (can't make sense of it basically).

I believe trying to "learn" those things after youth neuroplasticity is gone is hard

I can't believe that(but I will read any credible links if you have ), in the hearing case the people would turn off the device in the beginning when they feel overwhelmed, I assume that for the eyes you can cover them when you also get tired or if you are in a place with lot of visual information.

I worked in Audiology for 15 years and saw many elderly people unable to adapt to the changes and device acceptance was inversely related to age.

The world is a noisy place, and the less you exercises your noise reduction skills the harder it is to cope.

the #1 complaint I received from new users: "I hear too much noise"

the #1 request from all hearing aid users: "I only want to hear what I want to hear and nothing else"

Imagine telling your optometrist you only want to see the nice things in life.

In the Deaf community many people are shunned if they use hearing devices.

http://meducator.org/2018/01/the-cochlear-implant-genocide-o...

From the article :

Nishida said that the woman’s cornea remained clear and her vision had improved since the transplant a month ago.

From what I understood, she was not blind : she had an issue that made her vision blurry and could lead to blindness over time, but she took care of it early enough it seems

That's quite amazing

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