
December 2014 | VOL. 13, NO. 12 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu
Patient’s Own Stem Cells Could Clear a Cloudy Cornea
Treating the potentially blinding haze of a scar on the cornea might be as straightforward as growing stem cells from a tiny biopsy of the patient’s undamaged eye and then placing them on the injury site, according to pre-clinical model experiments conducted by McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members James Funderburgh, PhD, Yiqin Du, MD, PhD, and researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published in Science Translational Medicine, could one day rescue vision for millions of people worldwide and decrease the need for corneal transplants.