--- title: New Technique Restores Vision After Eye Injuries description: An experimental technique from Mass Eye and Ear uses stem cells to repair damage and vision loss after catastrophic eye injuries. canonical: https://time.com/6305754/stem-cell-vision-restoration/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-08-18T18:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:59.186Z article:section: Health og:title: New Technique Restores Vision After Eye Injuries og:description: The experimental method uses stem cells to help repair damage. og:url: https://time.com/6305754/stem-cell-vision-restoration/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8471354b8f2df8d/698a3f93cabb1d6217e51aaf/Dr.-Ula-Jurkunas-e1692377639204.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1601 og:image:height: 901 og:image:alt: Dr. Ula Jurkunas in the laboratory og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Technique Restores Vision After Eye Injuries twitter:description: The experimental method uses stem cells to help repair damage. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8471354b8f2df8d/698a3f93cabb1d6217e51aaf/Dr.-Ula-Jurkunas-e1692377639204.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A New Technique Uses a Patient's Own Stem Cells to Restore Their Vision > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=d95f0a87-cee0-42aa-ae73-44621127f944&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Health Benefits of Music [Watch (HLS stream): The Health Benefits of Music](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8G3e2Bmu.m3u8) (4:05)  _Published 2023-08-16. Researchers are using music as a tool to achieve non-musical goals and therapeutic effects._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Aug 18, 2023 6:00 PM UTC  Principal investigator Dr. Ula Jurkunas and her team in the laboratory. Principal investigator Dr. Ula Jurkunas and her team in the laboratory. Courtesy Mass Eye and Ear  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Aug 18, 2023 6:00 PM UTC One moment during the summer of 2020, Nick Kharufeh was enjoying an Independence Day party with his family in California. The next, he couldn’t see out of his left eye. Kharufeh, now 26, was struck in the face by a malfunctioning firework, causing severe damage to and blindness in his left eye—damage his doctors said they could do little about. “I thought my life was over,” says Kharufeh, who until the accident had been training to become a pilot. Only a few months later, however, Kharufeh’s mother learned about an experimental trial in Boston. Researchers there were working on a restorative technique meant specifically for patients, like Kharufeh, who had single-eye injuries that couldn’t be treated through typical methods. A cornea transplant can help restore function and vision to a damaged eye, but only if the patient still has a healthy reserve of stem cells around the cornea. These stem cells—adult cells known as limbal stem cells, which are distinct from embryonic stem cells—maintain the clear surface layer of the eye; without them, the cornea becomes bumpy, opaque, and painful. This was the case for Kharufeh: white tissue had grown over his eye, which had also painfully fused with his eyelid in the aftermath of his accident. ### More From TIME Kharufeh picked up and moved from California to Boston to be part of the trial. “I was told that there wasn’t much hope by all my doctors out in California,” he says. “I figured, ‘I might as well \[enroll\] because the worst that can happen is I stay blind in that eye and the best that can happen is I see again.’” Three years after his injury, the best-case scenario has come true for Kharufeh and several other people taking part in the trial, early results of which are described in a [paper published Aug. 18 in _Science Advances_](https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adg6470). First, a surgeon harvests stem cells from a patient’s healthy eye through a tiny biopsy, explains principal investigator Dr. Ula Jurkunas, a corneal surgeon at the Harvard-affiliated hospital Mass Eye and Ear, who has fine-tuned this technique over the past 20 years. Then, technicians divide the biopsied sample into even smaller pieces and add enzymes that separate stem cells from their underlying tissue. The cells grow for about two weeks, until they’ve formed a sheet. The sheet of cells is then transplanted into the injured eye, restoring the natural process that keeps the cornea functioning correctly. In two patients included in the _Science Advances_ paper, this technique resulted in vision improvements without further treatment. And in two others, the procedure restored function well enough for them to receive cornea transplants. The paper focuses on the first five people to enroll in the trial, in one of whom the stem-cell harvesting and grafting technique was not successful. Kharufeh joined the next phase of the trial and is thus not included in the published study, but has undergone the same procedure and will be included in future publications. Other researchers, both [in the U.S.](https://nyscf.org/resources/how-could-stem-cells-cure-blindness-experts-discuss-their-investigational-stem-cell-therapy-to-restore-vision/) and [overseas](https://neurosciencenews.com/amd-vision-stem-cell-23015/), have experimented with various ways of using stem cells to restore vision. Regulators in Europe have already [approved a therapy](https://www.eurostemcell.org/story/europe-approves-holoclar-first-stem-cell-based-medicinal-product) similar to the one developed at Mass Eye and Ear, and some doctors in the U.S. [perform other kinds of limbal stem cell transplants](https://www.ucihealth.org/news/2023/02/stem-cell-transplant-severe-eye-damage). But Jurkunas says other methods require either a larger biopsy, which can be risky for the patient's healthy eye, or donor cells, which can be rejected. The successful trial using such a small amount of a patient's own cells is an exciting milestone. That said, the approach is still experimental. Jurkunas’ lab continues to hone it, and she says the next step is working with U.S. regulators to design larger studies. It will also be important, she says, to make sure other surgeons and laboratories can duplicate the technique she and her colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children's Hospital, and the JAEB Center for Health Research spent so long perfecting. The procedure described in the paper is also meant for a specific group of patients: people who still have one healthy eye from which to harvest stem cells, but also have an injury extensive enough to rule out a cornea transplant. Jurkunas estimates about 1,000 people in the U.S. meet that description annually. But, she says, the approach is a “stepping stone” to future cell therapies. The procedure has already been huge for Kharufeh, whose left-eye vision is now blurry but functional, with the potential for even more dramatic improvement with further corrective surgery. “I can completely navigate my apartment or walk across the street with just my bad eye now,” he says. Kharufeh has put aside his dream of becoming a pilot, but with his eyesight improving and fewer follow-up appointments required at the hospital, he’s even thinking of going back to school to get his master’s degree in marketing. “It’s so cool,” he says, “to see out of my left eye.” ## Transcript Do I use music as a tool to achieve non-musical a goals. So I'm not really here to help my clients. Learn how to sing better or play an instrument better, or do anything like that. At my job is to help you help people learn to walk. Better learn to speak clearer using music as my tool to help them. If you just look at the brain using functional MRI imaging multiple networks are activated just as a result of listening to a song and even more that works are activated. When we're actually singing or playing a musical instrument. There's a lot of good research on how music and help with walking help us talking. You know, if somebody had a stroke they may walk with a, what's called a three point. Gait what I would do then is that would provide a strong beat which then they wouldn't rain to. And then before long, they would be walking with a step to phone Jane is a be going. Kane, step chain, step the different parts of music is processed, in different parts of the brain. So there's you think about the different parts of the music. There's Rhythm there's Melody, there's words there's memories associated with all those and each one of those pieces are processed in different part of the brain, brought together into a single unit. We hear it as one, but what the brain does then is it is able to anticipate for instance, with walking anticipate, what's coming up next? So your brain is predicting when that next beat will be which tells the body where in the place, the next foot down. That could be you being in a bad mood and putting on music that you enjoy and Spotify and just feeling a bit better after a song or two that you enjoy, you could use music to exercise more efficiently and to motivate yourself, to do it regularly. I'm preparing for my next 5K, and I'm trying to be more efficient about my steps and are getting shorter stride, as a result of the music that I hear. And that's enabling me to be more efficient than preparing for my 5K. There's a technique called the iso principle, basically. It's it's starting where you are and then slowly and training to where you want to go. So if you are really kept up, and you want to go to sleep, you would maybe create a playlist of eight or nine songs that start fast. And then the next one's a little slower and the next one's a little slower and a little slower and you will and trained right with that to a more relaxed state in Stanley. If you're waking up in the morning you're like half awake. Even want to like pep up. You can go the other way. You can start with have a playlist of eight or nine or 10 songs that start really slow, and then I can do it faster and faster, and faster before, you know, you're dancing around. You know, when you got your coffee, You can use the music like learning a new instrument at any age to challenge yourself and to build new Connections in the brain, which can build what we call in my field cognitive Reserve but also motor Reserve. So that in the face of getting older one connections do breakdown. That's normally what happens. And it happens at a much faster rate in diseases like Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. That so many of us were scared as we get older in the face of those diseases or just simply getting older having that extra boost of cognitive Reserve, literally stronger connections, and additional connections, is the result of learning a challenging. You still playing your music lesson, electric guitar. For example, is something that can actually serve you in good stead and potentially ward off the symptoms. 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