This incredible technology will help cure blindness in the nearest future

About 90% of the visually impaired people live in developing countries.

The main cause of vision loss is chronic eye diseases. The top two causes are uncorrected refractive errors and unoperated cataract.

For example, a leading cause of blindness among adults who is older than 50 is cataracts. Cataracts are treatable with surgery, but not people from developing countries don’t always have access to healthcare.

In 2012, scientists John B. Gurdon (England) and Shinya Yamanaka (Japan) won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery and development of special cells, which allow almost any cell in the body to be reprogrammed into a stem cell.

Stem cells have the potential to develop into many different cell types. They can be used to grow new organs and tissues for further use in regenerative medicine.

At the beginning of the trial, experiments were conducted on rabbits. Scientists transplanted the corneal epithelium to blind animals to restore the anterior part of the eye.

When the first clinical trial was conducted on a human, genetic mutations were discovered in the cells of a participant. Anyway, the scientists continued working on a technology and treated the first person successfully in 2017. Let's hope they will make progress and the cure for blindness will be found very soon.