About the session
'London Project: road to clinic using stem cell derived retinal pigment epithelia for age related macular degeneration'
Sight regeneration is the holy grail for the many millions who suffer from congenital eye diseases. Among the most prevalent thieves of sight is Age-Related Macular Degeneration, a disease in which the patient gradually loses the central portion of their vision, up to the point of legal blindness. Researchers have recently had tremendous success with implants designed to regenerate sight implants functionalised with stem cells derived from blind patients themselves. Those implants, when inserted into the eye, proved to be able to restore lost sight to the point that reading activities became possible again.
This talk will guide you through this impressive journey of clinical translation. Starting with the biological concept and benchtop evaluations of cell scaffolds, to animal trials, medical device design, and first in human evaluation. It will present a succinct story that shows all the hurdles of clinical pathways, using a state-of-the-art example of how regenerative therapies can be used to restore function in the body. Finally, the researchers will link with robotics that are now being developed to push those therapies at even more remote and hard-to-access locations of the human body, starting, again, with the structures of the human eye.
