Tiny implant to restore vision shows promise
February 5, 2010
The diseases macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa lay waste to photoreceptors, the cells in the electrical signals carried to the brain. The damage leaves millions of people worldwide with sight loss. The nerves behind the light –switching cells, however, remain intact, meaning that with new photoreceptors, a patient could see again.
Early attempts to regenerate sight by injecting seed or progenitor cells that grow into photoreceptors into the eye of a mouse model failed. Now, researchers trying to restore vision damaged by disease have found promise in a tiny implant that sows seeds of new cells in the eye, according to a Case Western Reserve University press release. As with any part of the central nervous system, scar tissue is a barrier to regeneration.
Published work has shown that people who suffer sight loss can again regain visual acuity with the addition of fewer photoreceptor cells than the number of cells that naturally populate a healthy eye. The researchers made the micro-implant’s scaffolding. They built a mesh using electrical charges to draw biodegradable polymers out of a needle and into a fine stream, producing interwoven fibres ranging from 1/20th to 1/1000th the width of a hair. Embedded in the fibres are pockets containing enzymes which slowly migrate out as the polymer degrades, eating away local scar tissue and exposing fertile ground for the progenitor cells carried on the implant’s surface. Without the enzymes, the implant alone increased the number of progenitor cells reaching the degraded site 16-fold and survival 9-fold over injection in a mouse model. With the enzymes, the number of progenitor cells that implanted and survived increased another 15-20 fold.