DT News - Nordic - Oral mucosal cells help to cure blindness

Dental Tribune International

Mon. 21 September 2015

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OSLO, Norway: Findings from the University of Oslo give hope to individuals suffering from impaired vision due to stem cell deficiency of the cornea. Using cells harvested from the patient’s mouth, researchers have been able to grow new tissue that, once transplanted into the damaged eye, helps to restore sight and eliminate pain from the cornea.

In individuals with limbal stem cell deficiency, the stem cells cannot renew the cornea’s outermost layer. Instead, other cells grow over the cornea, resulting in the cornea becoming fully or partially covered. In addition, some patients experience severe pain, which is due to the high number of nerve fibres in the area.

For the last ten years, Dr Tor Paaske Utheim, an ophthalmologist and research associate at the University of Oslo, has been conducting research on utilising stem cells from the mouth in order to help patients suffering from limbal stem cell deficiency. So far, almost 250 people with the condition have undergone treatment, involving transplantation of stem cells grown from their own mouth cells.

Utheim’s research objectives further focused on optimising the storage and transport potential of the treatment. Because the disorder most often affects people living in developing countries, it is especially important that extracted cells can be easily kept and transported, he explained. As a result, the clinician developed a special storage technology that enables the cultured tissue to be transported in a small custom-made plastic container. According to Utheim, the system allows for a completely new level of flexibility.

“Today, cells from the mouth are cultured for use in the treatment of blindness in only a few specialized centers in the world. By identifying the optimal conditions for storing and transporting the cultured tissue, we would allow for the treatment to be made available worldwide, and not just close to the cell culture centers,” added Rakibul Islam, a PhD student from Utheim’s research group.

Islam’s PhD project at the Department of Oral Biology showed, among other results, that cultured stem cells retain their quintessential properties best between 12 and 16 °C. He further found that certain areas of the mouth are better suited to use in regenerative medicine than others are. “Our results show that the location from which the mucosal tissue is harvested has a striking impact on the quality of the cultured tissue,” Islam said.

The group’s findings illustrate the benefits of interdisciplinary efforts in research, in this case between dentists and ophthalmologists. Their results will help to simplify and streamline the clinical procedures, and therefore make the treatment more accessible than it is today, Islam concluded. The results of his PhD study have not yet been published.

Limbal stem cell deficiency can be caused by factors such as ultraviolet radiation, chemical burns, serious infections like trachoma, and various other diseases, some of which are heritable. The exact number of people affected by the disorder is unknown, but in India alone there are an estimated 1.5 million people suffering from the condition.

A summary of Utheim’s findings was published in the June issue of the STEM CELLS journal in an article titled “Transplantation of cultured oral mucosal epithelial cells for treating limbal stem cell deficiency—Current status and future perspectives”.

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