New scientist profile: Dr. Albert Wu wants to cure blindness using stem cells

Dr. Albert Wu wishes he had more eyeballs. “There are many blind people who could see again if we had an eye to give them,” says the ophthalmologist at The Ottawa Hospital. “Unfortunately, only one in five patients who need a new cornea will get one.” 

Dr. Wu treats adults and children facing blindness due to a damaged or diseased cornea. This clear surface of the eye can be regrown, but physicians need cells from a healthy cornea to start the process. Ideally, the cells would come from the patient’s other eye. If both eyes are damaged, they need a cornea from a deceased organ donor, but those are in short supply.

Dr. Wu wants to solve this problem by growing human corneas in the lab. His goal is to use  a patient’s own blood or skin cells to generate cornea tissue using a powerful technology known as cellular reprogramming.

A human induced pluripotent stem cell (HPSC) is capable of generating all cell types of the body, including cornea cells. The Ottawa Hospital is a leader in HPSC research. It’s home to one of Canada’s most advanced HPSC core facilities, the Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Facility directed by Dr. William Stanford.

Dr. Wu’s team successfully used this lab-grown cornea tissue to cure blindness in rodents. Now he’s come to The Ottawa Hospital from Stanford University to bring this treatment to patients through clinical trials. 

“The Ottawa Hospital has expertise in turning lab discoveries into the treatments of tomorrow,” he says. “There are excellent resources and supports here to help me bring lab-grown cornea cells into clinical trials.” 

To prepare for a clinical trial, his team will do animal experiments to confirm the cells are safe and working as expected. They will also leverage Boreal Biomanufacturing to grow clinical-grade cornea cells to restore a human eye.

Dr. Wu recently joined the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) as a Scientist in the Neuroscience Program, and holds a Tier 2 Clinical Research Chair in Translational Stem Cell Research in Ophthalmology, funded by the University of Ottawa and its Faculty of Medicine, as well as the Department of Ophthalmology and OHRI. He is currently recruiting both basic science and clinical postdoctoral fellows, PhD and master’s students, medical and undergraduate students.

In addition to his lab work, Dr. Wu does clinical research in eye surgery on new techniques and improving patient outcomes. He also leads studies on equity and diversity in eye care, among both patients and care providers. For example, he found people who speak English as a second language had longer wait times in the Emergency Department and longer referrals to see specialists.

Patient experience remains front and center in all his research.

“Ultimately, we want to restore vision by regrowing a patient’s eye tissue using their own cells. These are the patients that we want to enroll. These new therapies are for them.”