New hope for repairing eye damage once thought untreatable
Ula Jurkunas performs the first CALEC surgery at Mass Eye and Ear.Photo courtesy of MGH Health New hope for repairing eye damage once thought untreatable Stem cell therapy safely restores cornea’s surface in clinical trial Ryan Jaslow Mass General Brigham Communications March 4, 2025 5 min read A Mass Eye and Ear-led clinical trial of a procedure that took stem cells from a healthy eye and transplanted them into a damaged eye safely restored corneal surfaces in 14 patients who were followed for 18 months. The stem cell treatment for blinding cornea injuries — called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cells, or CALEC — was developed at Mass Eye and Ear. It consists of removing stem cells from a healthy eye with a biopsy, expanding them into a cellular tissue graft in a novel manufacturing process that takes two to three weeks, and then surgically transplanting the graft into the eye with a damaged cornea. “Our first trial showed that CALEC...