Stem Cell Ophthalmology Treatment Study (SCOTS): improvement in serpiginous choroidopathy following autologous bone marrow derived stem cell treatment

We report results in a 77-year-old male patient with visual loss from long-standing serpiginous choroidopathy treated with bone marrow derived stem cells (BMSC) within the Stem Cell Ophthalmology Treatment Study (SCOTS). SCOTS is an Institutional Review Board approved clinical trial and the largest ophthalmology stem cell study registered at the National Institutes of Health to date (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01920867). Eight months after treatment by a combination of retrobulbar, subtenon, intravitreal and intravenous injection of BMSC, the patient's best corrected Snellen acuity improved from 20/80(–) to 20/60(+1) in the right eye and from 20/50(–) to 20/20(–3) in the left eye. The Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) visual acuity continued to improve over the succeeding 8 months and the optical coherence tomography macular volume increased. The increases in visual acuity and macular volume are encouraging and suggest that the use of BMSC as provided in SCOTS may be a viable approach to treating serpiginous choroidopathy.