Needles in Eyes

Sticking needles in your eyes might not be as bad as it seems. Any loss or damage to the inner layer of the cornea – the clear surface of the eye – can be permanent and lead to progressive sight loss. Corneal transplantation is the only available solution, and is invasive and limited, so researchers have developed a spiky new approach to restoring lost or damaged cells. They created a sheet of nanoneedles (green in the human cornea sample pictured) that can embed within the inner layer of cornea cells (red and blue), nestling down to the perfect depth. These needles can then directly deliver small strands of genetic material that interfere with a particular gene involved in keeping growth in check. With that silenced, cell growth increased. The nanoneedles can be integrated in contact lenses for long term drug delivery, restoring sight without sore eyes.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Eleonora Maurizi and colleagues
• Dentistry Centre Lab, University of Parma, Parma, Italy and Centre for Craniofacial and Regenerative Biology, King's College London, London, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Advanced Science, October 2022