One of the leading causes of vision loss in people 60 years old and above is macular degeneration. In America alone, around 11 million people have some sort of this age-related disease. In the world, advanced cases of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible blindness and visual impairment.
… it’s downright characterized as nothing more than the process of aging.
In fact, the study of MD has proven itself to be so fruitful for understanding aging as a whole, MD has become one of the first places that scientists have looked to in order to attempt to repair the damage of aging and restoring youthful, or normal function.
One of the ways to prevent blindness caused by AMD is stem cells. However, stem cells are expensive, and has some legal restrictions on funding and use.
Now in a new paper published in Nature, researchers demonstrate an alternative to stem cells by creating replacement photoreceptors from skin fibroblast cells via pharmacological-conversion—a process that promises to be cheaper, faster, and unburdened by ethical and legal restrictions.
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The loss of photoreceptors can result in MD and other retinal diseases that lead to irreversible blindness. In this new study, however, cells called fibroblasts can be chemically reprogrammed to produce photoreceptor-like cells that are now shown to restore vision in mice.
More details about this over at Good News Network.
Promising!
(Image Credit: George Shulkin/ Wikimedia Commons)