Mass Eye and Ear Doctors Collaborate with Dana-Farber to Rebuild Damaged Corneas Using Patients’ Own Stem Cells for First Time in United States

Surgeons at Mass Eye and Ear have replaced the ocular surface of four patients who each experienced chemical burns to one eye by using their own stem cells taken from the other healthy eye, in a technique known as “cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation” (CALEC). These four cases, all part of an ongoing clinical trial supported by the National Eye Institute of the NIH, represent the first procedures of their kind to occur in the United States.