Not much gets me to go Wow! these days but this news that was posted to the SciTech blog at Popular Science earlier made me do just that.

It appears that some researchers in Australia have discovered an incredibly ingenious way to cure blindness that has been caused by corneal damage. What they did was take everyday ordinary contact lenses and infuse them with the patient’s own stem cells. Amazingly patients reported an almost miraculous restoration of their sight.

Most of the patients in the study had only lost vision in one eye, the the collected stem cells from the good eye were plated onto the contact lenses. Two of the three patients went from legally blind to being able to read some of an eye chart while the third was able to regain enough sight to pass a driving exam.

So far they’ve only targeted corneal damage, which is estimated to be the cause of sight loss in about 1.5 million people every year. The simplicity and relatively low cost of the procedure could make it available in more impoverished areas. Even a congenital defect in both eyes, aniridia, was cured using stem cells taken from a different part of the eye.

Source: PopSci

The following video explains the technique but those with queasy stomach may want to take a pass as there are some clips of actual eye surgery.