World-leading eye researcher speaks about groundbreaking project to cure blindness

World-leading eye researcher Professor Pete Coffey, who is investigating the use of stem cells to treat age-related macular degeneration, will be hosting a webinar today to talk about the groundbreaking project. 

The London Project to Cure Blindness, which was funded by the Macular Society in 2008, is a partnership between Professor Pete Coffey from UCL and Professor Lyndon da Cruz, retinal surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital. The Project has been supported by the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre. 

The project started when researchers wanted to see if they could improve vision for people with sudden severe visual loss caused by wet AMD by replacing the diseased cells at the back of the patients’ affected eye using a stem cell-based treatment.

In March 2018 it was reported that the first patients to receive a new treatment derived from stem cells for people with wet AMD had gone from not being able to read at all even with glasses, to reading 60-80 words per minute with normal reading glasses.

The results of this groundbreaking clinical study, published in Nature Biotech, described the implantation of a specially engineered patch of retinal pigment epithelium cells derived from stem cells to treat people with sudden severe sight loss from wet AMD. It is hoped that it will also help treat dry AMD in the future.

Join Professor Pete Coffey in this free webinar at 1pm, where he will discuss the groundbreaking clinical studies and successful trials over the last 10 years and the future of the London Project to Cure Blindness

Register for the webinar.