skin cells

The retina is a lush layered field of tissue lining the back of the eye, a complex mix of specialized cells that serve as a transfer station where light signals are absorbed and sent to the brain to be translated into sight.

Researchers from University of Wisconsin, Madison have now created these unique retina cells from lowly skin cells -- opening the possibility that patients with damaged or diseased retinas might some day be able to grow themselves a cure from their own skin.

Lynn Allen-Hoffmann loves skin. When she talks about it, her voice softens until her Wisconsin accent is almost undetectable, and she whispers words like "elegant," "brilliant," and "masterpiece." As a professor of pathology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, Allen-Hoffmann has spent more than a decade studying the basic biology of skin cells: how they divide and how they become what she calls "our protective armor." Normally, her harvested skin cells -- like most other lab-grown cells -- survive about 15 weeks.



When they die, she throws them out and starts again. But about six years ago, as her laboratory manager Sandy Schlosser started tossing out old petri dishes, she noticed what looked like a small colony of living cells in the midst of dead ones.