The result was announced in a study published online June 10 in Nature Communications by scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. This is the first step to prepare helping people with retina disabilities. The cells created by the researchers haven’t yet produced a visual signal the brain can interpret into an image but transplants of genetically engineered retina cell will be possible with the goal to stop or reverse blindness. In the future, retinal tissue may be replaced with tissue grown in a lab. The study leader is M. Valeria Canto-Soler, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We knew that a 3-D cellular structure was necessary if we wanted to reproduce functional characteristics of the retina, but when we began this work, we didn’t think stem cells would be able to build up a retina almost on their own. In our system, somehow the cells knew what to do” specified Canto-Soler in the name of the authors (Xiufeng Zhong, Christian Gutierrez,Tian Xue, Christopher Hampton, M. Natalia Vergara, Li-Hui Cao, Ann Peters, Tea Soon Park, Elias T. Zambidis, Jason S. Meyer, David M. Gamm, King-Wai Yau & M. Valeria Canto-Soler).
