What happens if the retina part of the eye is damaged?
In diseases like age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and diabetes, doctors can do little but monitor the cell death in the retina. Doctors have tried to transplant retinas, but with little success so far, leaving the millions of Americans with these diseases little cause for optimism. Now comes a ray of hope in the quest to restore the retina, courtesy of the all-purpose, handy-dandy stem cell .Stem cells are so handy, they remind us of Vise Grips, the plier tool that does almost everything. Stem cells can transmute into many kinds of cells. -Embryonic stem cells, formed in the first days after fertilization, are the parents of every cell type in your body. They can form any kind of cell. -Blood stem cells become the red and white cells in your blood. -Neural stem cells can form the neurons that let you think, and the glia, the support cells that help your brain operate. And here’s the amazing thing: Once in the eye, the cells migrated to the damaged retina, and conv
