The human eye is a complex and sophisticated organ, one we’ve actually had to imitate to in technology to produce an image capture device of our own, the camera.
And in the eye, it’s the cornea that’s akin to the camera lens, focuses the incoming light into a visible image. Unfortunately, for at least 15 million people around the world, it’s faulty.
For people suffering from a warping of their corneas, the only solutions we have are that of aids like spectacles, or surgery. However, in a few years, doctors may be able to simply print out new corneas for those affected that could fix their eyesight permanently.
Researchers at the Newcastle University in the UK have managed to do just this, by 3D printing artificial corneas. They did this by mixing stem cells from the cornea of a healthy donor with collagen and algae molecules. This creates a sort of biological “ink”, that’s used as the material in the printing. It’s still a proof-of-concept development, but there’s serious potential here for further development.?
Che Connon, a professor of tissue engineering at Newcastle, says there are three main requirements to produce the bio-ink. “One, it needed to be able to keep a stem cell population alive,” he told Digital Trends. “It needed to be extrudable, or thin enough to push through a thin gauge needle to allow for bio-printing. And the material needed to be stiff enough such that it holds it shape, allowing to build up a 3D cornea.”
In their research in the past Connon and his team have managed to keep the stem cells in their bio-ink alive for weeks at just room temperature. With their latest round of study, they found they can print the corneas with ready-made bio-ink that has been infused with the stem cells; they don’t need to wait for the cells to grow by themselves. That means, at any point, they can have ready ink, and simply need a donor to whip up a new batch for a patient to get their new bionic eyes. Best of all, the replacements can be tailored to exactly fit the patient’s eyes, based on images and 3D renders taken beforehand.
As of right now, 3D printing is still a little too expensive to print something of this measure as a common treatment. However, the team believes the gradual advancement of technology will take care of this problem itself. And when that happens corneal implants will become an easy and cheap process, even when there’s a shortage of donors from among those deceased.