Barcelona · Spain · MIT Technology Review
A device that revives eyeballs from dead donors could make eye transplants possible
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It’s not easy to transplant a whole human eye.
Key facts
- Cooling the organs didn’t help preserve them, either—the eyes degenerated within 24 hours even when they were kept at 4°C (39°F)
- It’s cool,” says Shannon Tessier at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the research but studies perfusion of other organs
- Pia Cosma at the Centre for Genomic Regulation at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology in Spain and her colleagues have spent years developing their device
- But it came back after about 15 minutes of perfusion, according to the scientists behind the work
Summary
But researchers believe they might have a solution: a device that maintains and revives freshly removed eyeballs using a technique called perfusion. “It’s cool,” says Shannon Tessier at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the research but studies perfusion of other organs. Pia Cosma at the Centre for Genomic Regulation at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology in Spain and her colleagues have spent years developing their device. The eye itself sits on a “bed,” and excess fluids are drained away.