Sci. Transl. Med. 2, 46ra61 (2010)

Artificial corneal transplants improved the sight of more than 50% of patients with vision loss in a small two-year clinical trial.

The cornea is the eye's outermost lens, vital for controlling and focusing light into the eye. Corneal disease and damage are two of the main causes of vision loss and blindness, and affect millions worldwide. With a huge shortage of human donor corneas, May Griffith at Linköping University in Sweden and her colleagues created biosynthetic corneas from human collagen. Unlike plastic corneas, the biosynthetic ones mimic the cornea's protein scaffolding, triggering regeneration of the patient's own corneal cells and nerve growth in the eye.

In the study of ten patients who received the implant, visual acuity improved in six, remained the same in two and decreased in two. All ten could further correct their vision with contact lenses.