Stem cell therapy trial reverses "irreversible" damage to cornea | Hacker News Reader

Stem cell therapy trial reverses "irreversible" damage to cornea

newatlas.com

224 points01-_-49 comments

> The new study … investigated a new treatment called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cells (CALEC). This involves removing stem cells from a patient’s uninjured eye, growing their population in the lab for a few weeks, then surgically transplanting them into the injured eye.

14 patients tested. 79% reported healing in 12 months.

Note here that "complete success" doesn't seem to necessarily mean recovery of vision, just some kinds of testing of corneal health. The article vaguely says that "most" patients had some improvement of vision. I couldn't quickly find discussion of this in the actual study, but the study claims success in proving safety and suggests further investigation is necessary to show therapeutic efficacy.

This is an important point. It looks like they didn’t directly make any measurements of vision, just biological markers of corneal health.

That doesn’t mean that vision didn’t improve. It’s just a bit odd that if it did, they wouldn’t have quantified it and added that to this paper.

If you read the article, they clearly test vision in the patients.

>the majority of patients regained some sight, with some advancing from legally blind to low vision.

My mom is 76 and she had a virus ruin one of corneas. I wish this was already a common practice but I doubt she will be able to benefit from this.

If your eye is irritated and redness doesn't go away for days - visit your doctor.

Whoa thats wild. Did they identify the virus?

I don't remember details, just it was a virus.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37204123 (2023) :

> From "Sight for sore eyes" (2009) https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/health/sight-sore-eyes :

>> "A contact lens-based technique for expansion and transplantation of autologous epithelial progenitors for ocular surface reconstruction" (2009) http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/TP.0b013e3181a4bbf2

>> In this study, they found that only one brand (Bausch and Lomb IIRC) of contact lens worked well as a scaffold for the SC

Good to see stem cell research in the US.

Stem cell laws and policy in the United States: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_laws_and_policy_in...

Tangentially-related: the recurrent corneal erosion that I've been managing (painfully and unsuccessfully) for a decade has finally seen some measure of remission after I started self-treating with Fingerprick Autologous Blood. It's what it says on the tin: I use a blood testing fingerprick to draw a few drops of blood, which I insert under my eyelid. Blink. Done. Not even a month and half with a bandage contact lens helped as much. It's a little frustrating that years of dealing with far-flung ophthalmologists and expensive eye ointments that make things worse (Muro 128 costs more than printer ink) could have been preempted with a application of a substance that's already inside me.

Damn that’s metal as fuck.

Is there any medical studies on this or how did you know to try it? What’s going on at the biomolecular level?

It was mentioned on a reddit thread that I can no longer find, which prompted me to look up studies. I don't think that the mechanism is fully known, but apparently the research that has been done was prompted by the success of designer drugs that are derived from a patient's blood, as a way to make a similar treatment more accessible.

Not for the faint of heart but look at figure 3 of the original paper: * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56461-1

Amazing!

Although I understand it doesn’t mean this is even nearly useable for a real thing rn, that’s fucking dope.

How do we know if something is truly irreversible?

Irreversible might not be the thing to wonder about. Can it be changed to a more desired state or result? That has a much more definitive answer: pretty much always 'yes'.

holy moly

Can’t comment on the technical quality of this paper but wanted to highlight that the research was funded by the NIH which our government is currently chaotically gutting.

Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56461-1.pdf

Thank you!

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