Corneal blindness, which affects millions of people worldwide, is
typically treated with transplants of donor corneas, said senior
investigator James Funderburgh, Ph.D., 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.
"Shortages of donor corneas and rejection of donor tissue do occur,
which can result in permanent vision loss," Dr. Funderburgh said. "Our
work is promising because using the patient's own cells for treatment
could help us avoid these problems."
Experiments conducted by lead author Fatima Syed-Picard, Ph.D., also
of Pitt's Department of Ophthalmology, and the team showed that stem
cells of the dental pulp, obtained from routine human third molar, or
wisdom tooth, extractions performed at Pitt's School of Dental Medicine,
could be turned into corneal stromal cells called keratocytes, which
have the same embryonic origin.
The team injected the engineered keratocytes into the corneas of
healthy mice, where they integrated without signs of rejection. They
also used the cells to develop constructs of corneal stroma akin to
natural tissue.
"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."
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