The studies will be done by Masayo TAKAHASHI of RIKEN’s Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. Age-related macular degeneration concerns up to 700.000 elderly Japanese. It is planned to create autologous iPS cells using skin cells taken from a patient, and then induce retinal pigment epithelium cells, or RPE cells, from each patient’s iPS cells. The RPE cells will be transplanted into the patients’ retinas in the form of a cell sheet.
RIKEN press release, June 28, 2013
MHLW gives green light for clinical research on iPS studies to treat age-related macular degeneration