Cutting-edge technologies

GLAUCOMA IS caused by a buildup of damaging pressure within the eye and requires a daily dose of medicated eye drops to hold the disease at bay. Unfortunately, getting patients to follow that regimen daily for years is difficult, says Dr. Andrew Iwach, board chairman for the Glaucoma Research Foundation. Instead, clinical trials have started testing a thin polymer ring to be worn in the eye that would slowly release medication throughout the day. “It’s like drip irrigation, rather than flooding the eye,” Iwach says.

USING STEM cells to regenerate healthy cells in disease-damaged eyes is the holy grail for researchers. This is especially true for incurable conditions that damage the retina, the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye.

Earlier this year, a Japanese man became the first person to receive retinal stem cells created from donated skin cells to stop his macular degeneration from getting worse.

And scientists at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles report promising results from transplanting stem cells from embryonic cells into patients who had been blind for decades from AMD and another disease. A study in 2014 reported that 10 of the 18 patients who received the cells experienced significantly improved vision.

THE ARGUS II, a bionic retina approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is now being used by more than 100 people with retinitis pigmentosa and other related conditions. It also recently was implanted in the first person with macular degeneration.

This “bionic eye” uses a tiny camera attached to glasses that sends visual data to a microchip implanted in the eye, which then sends light signals to the brain. So far, the vision it provides is rudimentary, but patients say even some vision can greatly improve the quality of life for a blind person.