The farmer’s wife in the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice may need a different mouse hunting strategy. Thanks to new cell transplants, some formerly night-blind mice can see in the dark again, perhaps even well enough to evade the carving knife of the farmer’s wife.
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Injections of light-gathering nerve cells called rods into the retinas of night-blind mice integrated into the brain’s visual system and restored sight, Robin Ali of the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology and colleagues report online April 18 in Nature. The finding gives new hope that cell transplants may reverse damage to the brain and eyes caused by degenerative diseases and help heal spinal cord injuries.
Other researchers have tried, and failed, to repair damaged retinas with stem cell transplants, says Christian Schmeer, a neurologist at the University Hospital Jena in Germany. The new study is the first to demonstrate that transplanted nerve cells can restore function. “They show it is possible and they do it convincingly,” Schmeer says. At the same time, Schmeer cautions, “there’s still a lot to be done until it’s ready for clinical use.”