Masayo Takahashi, who led the world's first operation to implant induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into a human body, says greater Japanese understanding of the risks and benefits of new medical procedures is key to achieving her goal of standardizing the procedure one day.

About two months after her team successfully transplanted retinal cells grown from iPS cells into a woman in her 70s with age-related macular degeneration, Takahashi, an ophthalmologist at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, said she wanted to make the treatment available and affordable in about 10 years.

"My goal is to make the treatment a standard one," Takahashi said Wednesday at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, adding that the pioneering operation in September was "just a start."