A pioneering human embryonic stem cell operation has been carried out by Surgeons in London, as a part of an ongoing trial to find a cure for blindness for many patients. They performed the procedure on a woman aged 60 at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

The procedure included ‘seeding’ a small patch with specialized eye cells and its implantation at the retina’s back. The London Project to Cure Blindness was established 10 years back with an aim to reverse vision loss in patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The procedure is going to be performed on 10 patients, having the wet form of AMD. All of them have suffered a sudden vision loss due to defective blood vessels in the eye.

Surgeons will monitor them for 365 days to check if the treatment is safe and whether their vision shows any improvement or not. They operated the woman, who does not want to be named, last month.

Co-leader of the London Project, Prof Peter Coffey, of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, said, “We won't know until at least Christmas how good her vision is and how long that may be maintained, but we can see the cells are there under the retina where they should be and they appear to be healthy”.

The cells used by them form the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), the layer of cells responsible for nourishment and for supporting the photoreceptors in the macula, the seeing part of the eye.

The RPE cells die at the time of macular degeneration due to which the eye loses function. Patients suffering from AMD lose their central vision. The vision becomes distorted and blurred.

Blindness is the phenomenon of a blind person gaining the ability to see, usually as a result of medical treatment. As a thought experiment, the phenomenon is usually referred to as Molyneux's Problem. The first published human case was reported in 1728 by the Surgeon William Cheselden. Patients who experience dramatic recovery from blindness experience significant to total agnosia, having serious confusion with their visual perception.