Scientists accomplished the impressive feat of transforming stem cells from the dental pulp of wisdom teeth into cornea cells that could potentially be used to treat eye disorders and injuries.
Corneal blindness affects millions of people across the globe, and is generally treated with transplants of donor corneas, the University of Pittsburgh reported. This new breakthrough could allow corneal transplant tissue to be created using patients' own cells.
"Shortages of donor corneas and rejection of donor tissue do occur, which can result in permanent vision loss. Our work is promising because using the patient's own cells for treatment could help us avoid these problems," said senior investigator James Funderburgh, professor of ophthalmology at Pitt and associate director of the Louis J. Fox Center for Vision Restoration of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh, a joint program of UPMC Eye Center and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
A team of researchers demonstrated that stem cells harvested from the dental pulp of wisdom teeth could be turned into corneal cells, or keratocytes, which come from the same embryonic origin. The new keratocytes were injected into the corneas of healthy mice, and proved to successfully integrate into the tissue without any signs of rejection. The cells were also used to construct external corneal tissue that resembled the real thing.
"Other research has shown that dental pulp stem cells can be used to make neural, bone and other cells," Dr. Syed-Picard noted. "They have great potential for use in regenerative therapies," said lead author Fatima Syed-Picard, also of Pitt's Department of Ophthalmology.
In the future the researchers plan to determine whether or not the new technique can be used to repair corneal scarring in animal models.
The research was reported in a recent edition of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine.
