An Audacious Vision: Researchers Aim For First Human Eye Transplant Within The Decade
Scientists have strived for successful eye transplants for centuries. Early attempts read like the diary of Mary Shelley: implanting a dog’s eye into a rat’s groin, transplanting a rat’s eye onto the neck of another rat, plucking the eye of a sheep from one socket and placing it into the other.
But never has a whole-eye transplant been successfully done in a living person. The eye’s complex web of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves — connected directly to the brain — has doomed past experiments to failure.
Now a team of Pittsburgh transplant surgeons aims to turn that tide, and they’re hopeful they can do so in just the next decade, using donor eyes to restore sight in people who have suffered traumatic eye injuries.
But never has a whole-eye transplant been successfully done in a living person. The eye’s complex web of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves — connected directly to the brain — has doomed past experiments to failure.
Now a team of Pittsburgh transplant surgeons aims to turn that tide, and they’re hopeful they can do so in just the next decade, using donor eyes to restore sight in people who have suffered traumatic eye injuries.