Stem cells hold vision for the future.

tries to offer hope to hopeless eyes. One of his beneficiaries is 77-year-old Donald Smolley. The men met several years ago at the University of Minne-sota Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapo-lis, where Holland directs the Corneal and External Disease Service. After a burning backsplash of drain-clearing liq-uidin 1968, Smolley was left legally blind in his right eye and with little vision in the left. A corneal transplant in Smolley's right eye shortly after the injury failed outright. Some sight returned to his left eye, and Smolley continued working as building superintendent at the Minne-apolis public library. But eventually the left eye began to fail. Smolley took early retirement, and he and his wife moved to the small western Minnesota town of Montevideo. "I couldn't see to go across the street; I couldn't see what was on my plate at dinner," Smolley recalled. So when he was referred to Holland in the early 1990s, "I couldn't see anything, so I was willing to try anything," Smolley said. "Dr Holland said it wasn't guaranteed, but the surgery was better for the type of chemical burn I had than for disease. I was a good candidate." Importance of Ocular Surface Holland performed a keratolimbal al-lograft on Smolley's right eye as a prelude to a subsequent penetrating kera-toplasty. The procedure Holland used has evolved from a finding in the mid 1980s that at the junction of the cornea and sclera are limbal stem cells that give rise to the corneal epithelium (J Cell Since then, ophthalmologists have realized that, in some patients, kerato-plasty doesn't fail because of tissue rejection but because the stem cells have been destroyed and the transplanted cornea can't thrive without a healthy ocular surface. Therefore, the mission for some ophthalmologic surgeons in recent years has been to develop techniques to transplant stem cell-containing tissue capable of replenishing the ocular surface, helping to ensure more successful keratoplasties and restoration of sight. During a recent Research to Prevent Blindness science writers seminar in Universal City, Calif, Holland discussed refinements in epithelial transplantation that have enabled some patients with profound visual loss to regain sufficient sight to drive a car or see a loved one's face. Or in Smolley's case, surprise his friends and neighbors by reading the breakfast menu at a local cafe. Epithelial transplantation is a term that includes several different types of procedures. Holland has proposed a system to classify …