Experimental synthetic cornea restores vision for 20 patients
Curing corneal blindness with bioengineered pig skin implants
Scientists say they've restored the vision of 20 people who were significantly visually impaired by using a synthetic cornea implant made from pig skin.
Published in Nature Biotechnology, a new paper details how researchers in India and Iran created cell-free synthetic corneas out of "medical-grade purified freeze-dried type I porcine dermal atelocollagen" — also known as frozen pig skin collagen — and implanted them onto the eyes of 20 people who suffered from visual impairment.
To study how well the experimental implant would work, the team conducted a pilot feasibility study that implanted the synthetic corneas into the eyes of the 14 of the initial 20 patients who were initially blind.
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Remarkably, after 24 months in which "no adverse event was observed" in any patient, all 20 patients experienced restored vision and a restored ability to wear contact lenses.
Though lots of study in recent years has gone into the creation and development of synthetic corneas, the researchers noted in their study that to their knowledge, nobody has yet attempted their specific implantation procedure — and Lagali told Technology Networks that he hopes the new technique will "significantly reduce the demand for donor corneal tissue in the future."
