How 1 Patient’s Healthy Eye Is Being Used to Cure His Blind Eye

After a freak accident left him blind and in agony, Phil Durst thought hope was lost. Then, a world-first stem cell trial changed everything.

BY VICTORIA SALVES, EDITORIAL FELLOW

Last March, a clinical trial led by researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School showed promising results after restoring the corneal surfaces in 14 patients.

One year after the clinical trial results were first published, those patients—all of whom were told the damage to their cornea were untreatable pre-surgery—are continuing to see positive results, leading researchers to speculate whether this novel technique can cure other forms of blindness. 

But patients that have suffered certain kinds of trauma to the area—like an infection or a chemical burn for example—would not qualify for that kind of procedure. And those with deficient limbal stem cells tend to experience significant pain. 

Thankfully, this procedure would aim to address that gap in vision rehabilitation.

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The new technique uses an approach called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell (CALEC), and involves the harvesting of stem cells from a patient’s healthy eye before developing those cells in a lab for two to three weeks and surgically grafting those cells into the injured eye. 

Currently, patients with corneal damage are treated with a corneal transplant surgery, which involves replacing the damaged surface with that of deceased donors. In order for patients to undergo the procedure they must still have a healthy, or at the very least functional, surface including viable limbal stem cells. 

Phil Durst, 54, the first patient to receive the CALEC procedure, was suddenly blinded in his left eye, after being blasted in the face with commercial dishwasher detergent containing sodium hydroxide, at hometown restaurant in Homewood, Alabama, he told National Geographic. 

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