St. Luke’s launches use of stem cell replacement to treat eye defects

Scientists and eye doctors at the St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC) in Quezon City have announced a new breakthrough in optical treatment, in which damaged stem cells in the eyes can be replaced through transplant surgery.

Dr. Noel Chua, director of St. Luke’s International Eye Institute, said the procedure involves harvesting healthy stem cells from the remaining good eye of the patient.

The stem cells are grown in a laboratory where they divide and multiply. The cultured cells are then transplanted to replace the missing cells in the bad eye, enabling the normal cornea to restore itself.

If both eyes are damaged, a donor — most likely a relative — can provide the needed donor cells.

Chua noted the technology offers new hope to eye patients who need to undergo cornea transplant but have been rejected for the procedure because of severely damaged stem cells in the eye surface.

"We are at the stage in our scientific knowledge and development where we can replace damaged cells with bioengineered ones. St. Luke’s is the first to do conjuctival steam cell transplant here in the Philippines," he noted at a press briefing.

It is estimated that 20 percent of people who are blind or partially blind have damaged stem cells and cannot be subjected to a corneal transplant.

The cornea is the clear part of the eye that covers the iris and the pupil while the conjuctiva is the thin outer coating that covers the whites of the eye.

Corneal and conjunctival stem cells are essential to vision as they continually produce new cells to replace ageing cells or repair injuries to the eye surface. The cells lose the ability to self-repair due to injury or disease. In such cases, the cells have to be replenished.

Last July 1, the institute operated on a 52-year-old indigent man whose left eye had been blind for 10 years after being hit by shrapnel. The center intends to operate on nine more indigent patients this year.

The conjuctiva can be damaged through burns, chemical splash, contact lenses, ocular cicatricial pemphigoid and severe microbial infection, among others.

The transplanted cells were cultured by Mark Pierre Dimamay, head of the Stem Cell Laboratory at SLMC’s Research and Biotechnology Division while the transplant surgery was led by Dr. Jessica Abaño, a specialist in the cornea, external eye disease and refractive surgery.

Abaño added that stem cells could also be harvested from a cadaver, but this would have a higher rejection rate than cells from a living donor.

Chua said the laboratory was set up in 2004 and is equipped with innovative technology to allow the application of this technique in a local setting.

"We are able to achieve this breakthrough because of the rich pool of talent that we have in the institute and because of the fact that we are based in one of the world’s best hospitals that carries on the country’s largest research and development effort in the life sciences," he maintained.

The institute is the first eye care facility in the Philippines to acquire "top-of-the-line ophthalmic surgery equipment" and the Heidelberg ICG Retinal Laser Scanning System, the first and only digital system in the country with an advanced scanning laser ophthalmoscope.

It recently acquired the world-class Zeiss Humphrey Matrix Perimeter with frequency doubling technology that can detect damage caused by glaucoma early, providing patients suffering from potentially blinding illness with the best chances of cure.

"Today, we are able to do ocular surface tissue. In the future, we could learn to do the retina. The technology to replace diseased cells in various organs with bioengineered tissues is rapidly moving from the realm of science fiction to reality," Chua added.