Restoration of vision with new generation Artficial Theranostic Cornea

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The cornea is the outermost transparent part of the eye, which acts as the main refractive element to transmit light to the retina, giving us sight. Any damage or disease to the cornea that causes permanent loss of its transparency results in corneal blindness. The World Health Organization in their 2017 report estimated that 253 million people live with visual impairment, with 23 million suffering with one eye condition. It is clear that increasing donations alone will no way be sufficient to make up for the donor cornea shortage. More importantly, even if donor corneas were available, patients with severe pathologies would not benefit from donor as they are at high risk of rejecting the donor cornea, thereby necessitating an alternative approach. I shall develop nanotechnology assisted pro-regenerative artificial cornea (ARCs) that can combat the clinical challenges associated with corneal blindness to promote functional regeneration and restore vision. ARCs will be developed together with an in-built theranostic (diagnostic cum therapeutic) monitoring system to identify and treat factors leading to rejection and failure of the transplant. The new artificial cornea will be anti-infective, anti-inflammatory and will have cell-proliferative activity. Information will be gathered in this pre-clinical project would guide towards future clinical trials and in translation of research to patients with corneal blindness. My proposed approach is never been addressed and is completely new to the field to restore vision might revolutionise the present cornea transplantation regime could have significant impact and quality of life in UK and beyond.