Google – AFP, 19 July 2013
Microscope
image of the renal tubule cells, pictured in Kyoto, Japan,
on January 23, 2013
(Kyoto University/AFP/File)
|
TOKYO —
Japan's government on Friday gave its seal of approval to the world's first
clinical trials using stem cells harvested from a patient's own body.
Health
Minister Norihisa Tamura signed off on a proposal by two research institutes
that will allow them to begin tests aimed at treating age-related macular
degeneration (AMD), a common medical condition that causes blindness in older
people, using "induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells".
Stem cell
research is a pioneering field that may offer a cure for conditions that are
presently incurable, and scientists hope these clinical trials on a treatment
for AMD may offer hope to millions of people robbed of their sight.
Japan's
Health Minister, Norihisa
Tamura, pictured in Tokyo, on
December 27, 2012
(AFP/File,
Toshifumi Kitamura)
|
Riken will
harvest stem cells, using skin cells taken from patients, a spokesman said.
The trial
treatment will attempt to create retinal cells that can be transplanted into
the eyes of six patients suffering from AMD, replacing the damaged part of the
eye.
The
transplant may be conducted as early as the middle of next year at the IBRI
Hospital, he said.
AMD, a
condition that is incurable at present, affects mostly middle-aged and older
people and can lead to blindness. It afflicts around 700,000 people in Japan
alone.
Stem cells
are infant cells that can develop into any part of the body.
Until the
discovery of iPS cells several years ago, the only way to obtain stem cells was
to harvest them from human embryos.
This is
controversial because it requires the destruction of the embryo, a process that
religious conservatives, among others, oppose.
Groundbreaking
work done in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, a Nobel Laureate in
medicine last year, succeeded in generating stem cells from adult skin tissue.
Like
embryonic stem cells, iPS cells are also capable of developing into any cell in
the body, but crucially their source material is readily available.
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