A soft spot for stem cells helps cornea healing New research developed by scientists which reveals a potential revolutionary way to treat eye injuries and prevent blindness by softening the tissue hosting the stem cells. It has been discovered that a simple application of collagenase, a tissue softening enzyme prevents the loss of corneal stem cells following an injury and could prevent patients from losing their sight. This shows that keeping corneal stem cells in a soft environment is fundamental for their reproduction, self-renewal and ability to heal the damaged tissue. It offers hope to almost 500,000 people a year who lose their sight due to chemical burns including acid attacks. Scientists were able to determine that the corneal stem cell niche, the area of tissue in the cornea where stem cells live is a much softer environment than the rest of the tissue and stiffening the niche causes stem cells to mature and lose their self-renewing and wound healing properties
Could hair cell regeneration be a treatment for deafness? Researchers have proposed the use embryonic stem cells for in vitro inner ear studies to potentially be a treatment for deafness. Deafness due to disease, ageing or birth defects is caused by the loss of hair cells in the inner ear, the hairs which are responsible for the detection of equilibrium and sound. Currently, deafness is a progressive and irreversible condition in humans, with the typical treatment to be the use of hearing aids. The scientists proposed to use embryonic stem cells (ESCs) as a platform for in-vitro inner ear studies. Embryonic Stem cells establish an alternative and powerful approach to generate unlimited numbers of hair cells in a simple culture dish without the use of animals. Through genetic manipulation of embryonic stem cells to activate expression of these transcriptional regulators, a direct and robust conversion of stem cells into a hair cell phenotype was successfully achieved. Usi