Portable device could make functional eye transplants a reality, received 2025 08 20

[Colin Howard]

By Ben Coxworth, New Atlas

Greetings,

I hope Trump doesn't remove funds from this project, I certainly want it to
be fully successful.

The author writes:

Despite what some movies may suggest, it's currently impossible to
transplant functional, seeing human eyeballs. Scientists are taking a
big step in that direction, however, with the development of an
eye-transplant device known as the eye-ECMO.

First of all, we should note that it is possible to transplant
non-functional eyes into empty eye sockets for aesthetic purposes, such
as during face transplants. Unfortunately, however, those eyes are
incapable of seeing.

This is due mainly to the fact that eyes require a constant supply of
oxygenated blood, which is difficult to supply after an eye has been
removed from a donor's body. If that flow of oxygen ceases for even a
short time, the eye's retina will permanently cease to function.

That's where the eye-ECMO comes in.

Taking the "ECMO" in its name from the "extracorporeal membrane
oxygenation" systems that are used to oxygenate patients' blood during
heart and lung transplants, the device is being developed by scientists
from the University of Miami, along with Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye
Institute and the Miller School of Medicine.

The idea is that when an eye is removed from a brain-dead donor's body
before their clinical death occurs (and with their family's consent), it
gets placed in a portable machine - the eye-ECMO - which continuously
pumps warmed, oxygenated blood mixed with a "unique solution" in and out
of the organ.

As long as that liquid circulates, the eye remains alive and functional.
And because the setup is portable and self-contained, both it and the
eye can be moved from one operating room to another, or even between
different hospitals.

Joshua Prezant/University of Miami
In an initial test of the technology, a prototype device was able to
keep a donor human eye viable for several hours after extraction.

Importantly, an added dye could be seen flowing through the eye's
retina, which remained functional the whole time.

"This type of procedure had never been performed at any site in the US -
and perhaps in the world," says team member Assoc. Prof. Ashutosh
Agarwal, a biomedical engineer at the University of Miami. "No product
like the eye-ECMO exists, but this was the proof that everything was
working."

Next steps in the research involve devising methods of preserving and
reconnecting the eye's optic nerve. The entire project was made possible
through an award from the US Department of Health and Human Services'
Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Transplantation of
Human Eye Allografts program, that the entire University of Miami team
received in late 2024.

Source: University of Miami

https://newatlas.com/medical-devices/eye-ecma-eyeball-transplant-machine/

[ano...@ntlworld.com]

Thanks for sharing this Colin, most interesting.

Paul.

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