The blind see? Not necessarily with ACTC. For the newbies, you need to dig a little deeper on your due diligence to understand the MOA, (the method of action) behind this combo trial. The purpose of this therapy is NOT to give those that are blinded by Macular Degeneration. It is to aide those on their way to blindness that do have some partial sight left.
The disease as I understand it is a progressive disease. It simply overwhelms the connectivity nerves between the rods and cones with the retinal nerves and eventually breaks the connection. By injecting the stem cells into the channel in front of the retina, it repairs that connection and improves eye sight where is was deteriorating. BUT, it can't repair the cones and the rods that atrophe after the retina connection has been completely broken. This therapy does NOT repair rods and cones in the eye.
So, please, do not sell this to yourselves/others as re-gaining sight for those poor souls that have completely lost their vision. Instead, understand that this therapy is going to be applied to those on their way to losing their sight.
Perhaps our researchers can eventually rebuild rods and cones within the eye. But, for the time being that is a long way off.
So the phrase, "there are people walking around in Asia and Europe that were blind that have regained their sight" is misleading and a dangerous overstatement of this therapy.
Why raise this? Because we will eventually have shorts trying to overstate the benefit and then slam the therapy as it "doesn't work". We need to be vigilent to accurately communicate among ourselves the benefits of this therapy.
