Stem cells for the reconstruction of the cornea
For years researchers around the world set in motion the so-called stem cells to repair damaged tissues and organs from certain types of disease or trauma. Like little ants, these cells are used to activate certain areas of our bodies that were now worn quite definitive.
That of stem cells is not a battle to prepare for the future, but today is already a fairly established fact; just think that in the field of dermatology these cells are used from twenty-five years to rebuild the skin in the laboratory and to treat severe burns skin. It is from this great experience that will build important news for the future.
Professor Michele De Luca, professor of Biochemistry at the University of Reggio Emilia, said cell therapy has made a significant step forward because with the use of different adult stem cells’s corneal epithelium, it was possible to reconstruct entire human cornea.
This, is an advanced technique used in various centers of Ophthalmology specializing in Italy, is able to intervene in serious cases of eye disease, where the cases of recovery are nil. The complete reconstruction of the cornea it can cure the most severe cases of damage to the eyes caused by chemicals or otherwise.
Professor De Luca said that in these cases while desiring to make an eye transplant, this would be totally useless because the damage is too extensive, then it uses the help of stem cells and the complete regeneration of damaged parts. Of significant importance, therefore, these huge steps made by the science of medicine, says Professor De Luca, in collaboration with Professor Graziella Pellegrini, a professor of cell biology at the University of Modena and the Professor Fulvio Mavilio, professor of molecular biology at Reggio Emilia.
The research, funded by more Telethon and published in Nature Medicine, was conducted at the Polyclinic at Modena on a patient suffering from a serious form of junction epidermolysis bullosa, genetic disease characterized by the complete removal of the skin from the dermis. This disease is caused by malfunction in the gene for the beta 3 chain of laminin 5, a simple protein that allows the attachment of the epidermis to the dermis, without which the skin came off, creating serious infection and inflammation.
Professor De Luca explains that in Italy there has been a single transplant of its kind, a man about 36 years suffering from a severe form of epodermolisi. After only one year after this treatment has been fully confirmed the full regeneration of damaged areas, with full maintenance of the epidermis, keeping the exact same DNA, without the formation of the dangerous bubbles.
Before the famous transplant, using a biopsy of the skin, were extracted from the patient some stem cells, genetically corrected later, and grown in the laboratory. This growth was made up to create a veil of skin grafting in the legs of patients with the disease.
We have succeeded for the first time to completely cure a genetic disease of the skin, says Professor De Luca, who adds, the next thing to do now is to intervene, and treat other genetic diseases such as blindness, dystrophies and disabling diseases, with the same techniques used in this research.