Towards Artificial Corneas
Prosthetics research continues to threaten to give tissue engineering a run for its money over the next decade or two. Here, CORDIS looks at building artificial components for the eye: researchers "have developed an artificial cornea that may be tested on humans as early as the beginning of 2008. ... So far it has proven difficult to produce suitable artificial corneas due to [conflicting requirements]: While the implant has to grow firmly into the natural tissue, the centre has to remain clear of cells, so as such cell growth would impair vision. ... Our artificial corneas are based on a commercially available polymer which absorbs no water and allows no cells to grow on it ... Once the polymers have been shaped, the edge of the cornea is coated with a special protein, which the cells of the natural cornea can latch onto. ... The new artificial cornea has already been tested in the laboratory, being implanted in rabbits. Those tests have produced promising results ... [other research groups are] trying to reconstruct a human cornea in vitro, using tissue engineering. Such a development would transform eye surgery and dramatically cut the number of experiments conducted on animals."
Link: http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&RCN=28483