Breakthrough soon: Dental pulp to help repair injured cornea

In a first of its kind, doctors at Sankara Nethralaya are researching on the use of dental pulp that exhibits some features of corneal epithelial to replace the limbus (border of cornea and sclera - white of the eye) in case of damage.

“The research that kick-started last year has now transformed into secondary protocol stage, but we cannot reveal to what extend the research will succeed,” said lead researcher Dr. S. Krishnakumar, stem cell Research, Sankara Nethralaya.

He further explained that in usual cases of corneal blindness, doctors use epithelial cells from other parts of the body (especially from the cheekbone area or epithelium cells from cadaver) and through this research the usage of dental pulp is explored.

Sowmya Parameshwaran, assisting professor in stem cell lab at Sankara Nethralaya, explained that when a person blinks there is a loss of epithelium cells. Whenever there is a loss in the limbus it automatically gets self renewed. But whenever there is an accident like firework or alkaline, the affected limbus region does not exist at all.

“At that time we take from the other eye. But if both the eyes get affected then we need to find out an alternative which we are working on,”she said adding that normally corneal epithelial tissues are taken from cheekbones but there is a problem with such approach.

“We want to meddle with the condition in which it grows outside the body so that we can push them towards corneal epithelium,” she said. They also added that generally in case of corneal transplant the epithelial cells are taken from the eyes of the dead bodies. “But the need is higher than the supply so we had to choose an alternative,” said Parameshwaran.