Restoring Sight: Advanced Therapies and Technologies to Treat Blindness

Vision loss can affect anyone regardless of age, although most people with vision impairment and blindness are above the age of 50 years

Vision is our most dominant sense, often taken for granted by those who have it. Those without it understand its importance, as its absence complicates learning, reading, walking, and living life to its fullest.

The impairment of vision occurs when an eye condition affects the function of the visual system, which has serious consequences throughout one's life.

An individual, if he lives long enough, tends to experience at least one eye condition in their lifetime. Globally, about 2.2 billion people have some form of vision impairment. In about half of them, damaged vision can either be prevented or is yet to be addressed. Here, timely and quality care is important as it can mitigate many of the consequences of eye conditions. 

Vision impairment is a financial burden not only for the individual but also for the broader economy, with an estimated annual global cost of productivity of $411 billion. To reduce this economic burden, a team of researchers used anti-inflammatory drugs in hydrogel to deliver the drugs effectively to the inflamed area and reduce inflammation in the retina.

Researchers injected mice suffering from retinal degeneration with the drug-loaded inflammation-responsive hydrogel and noted that the retina's inflammatory factors reduced to 6.1%.

A protective effect was also found on photoreceptor cells, which get destroyed by retinal degeneration. Notably, the hyaluronic acid-based hydrogel, by allowing for different rates of degradation in each patient, minimizes the need for repeated injections.

The team plans to digitize the amount of drug and hydrogel used and treatment period as per disease progression, for future commercialization. Other areas to be assessed include the long-term stability of the drug delivery system and whether it would also work on other retinal diseases, noted Prof. Seung Ja Oh from Kyung Hee University.

Creating Extremely Small Implants with Long-Term Viability

To treat blindness, vision implants have emerged as a spectacular technology that enables people with advanced vision loss to regain some sense of vision. 

When a person is blind, their visual cortex still functions, awaiting input. This is where brain stimulation comes into the picture, involving the sending of electrical impulses through an implant to the brain's visual cortex. To achieve this, thousands of electrodes—each representing a pixel—are required to provide enough information to create an image. 

According to Maria Asplund, a Professor of Bioelectronics at Chalmers:

“The more electrodes that ‘feed' into it, the better the image would be. (The image created) Would be like the matrix board on a highway, a dark space, and some spots that would light up depending on the information you are given.”

While this technology has already been in existence for many decades now, it needs to be improved upon due to its bulky size, which also causes scarring in the brain. Then there's the matter of implant material, which can be too rigid and corrode over time.

So, a team of researchers from the University of Freiburg, the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden came together to develop a really small implant. This implant is like a ‘thread' with all these electrodes, the size of a neuron, placed in a row. 

Having a remarkably small electrode means one implant can fit lots of electrodes, allowing for a more detailed image. 

“Miniaturization of vision implant components is essential. Especially the electrodes, as they need to be small enough to be able to resolve stimulation to large numbers of spots in the ‘brain visual areas.”

– Study lead Asplund 

The thing is, creating a really small implant, when combined with the complexity of a human body, comes with challenges, such as having the small electrode last in a moist, humid environment for a long time.

The electrical implant in this research is 40 mm wide and 10 mm thick, with its metal parts only a few hundred nanometers thick. Given its tiny size, it can't afford to corrode or stop working. To prevent this, the team used a conducting polymer to protect the metal from corrosion and to transduce the electrical stimulation.

“The conducting polymer-metal combination we have implemented is revolutionary for vision implants as it would mean they hopefully could remain functional for the entire implant lifetime.”

– Asplund

Kajian ini telah mencapai langkah pertama untuk membuat elektrod kecil sebesar sel saraf dan memastikan ia berfungsi dengan berkesan di dalam otak untuk jangka masa yang sangat lama, langkah seterusnya ialah kini "mencipta implan yang boleh mempunyai sambungan selama 1000s elektrod,” yang Asplund sedang meneroka dalam projek Neuraviper.

Merawat Sel RPE Menunjukkan Potensi Hebat untuk AMD

Kehilangan penglihatan boleh memberi kesan kepada sesiapa sahaja tanpa mengira umur, walaupun kebanyakan orang yang mengalami gangguan penglihatan dan buta berumur melebihi 50 tahun. Degenerasi makula berkaitan usia (AMD) sebenarnya adalah antara punca utama kebutaan di negara maju dan membangun, tetapi dalam cara yang berbeza.

Di negara maju, pengumpulan drusen (

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