Regenerated Eye Transplanted

Introduction

Eyes of the frogs can now be regenerated from embryonic stem cells and transplanted into tadpoles, where they function when the tadpole grows up a research group at the University of Tokyo said. The success supports expectations that the eye will become one of the first organs used clinically in the emerging field of regenerative medicine. For the experiments, the researchers excised a mass of several thousand cells from a frog embryo, added chemicals to induce the cell mass to differentiate into the functional components of the eye, including the lens and retina. Then they removed the left eye from a tadpole and replaced it with this regenerated eye.

The procedure was conducted on a group of 60 tadpoles. Of that total, around 40 accepted the transplants and 10 tadpoles developed into frogs. When the 10 frogs were exposed to light, the transplanted left eyes reacted in the same way as the natural right eyes. Dissection confirmed that the regenerated eyes had been accepted by the animal's bodies and supplied with blood vessels and nerves.

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