Pig collagen cornea restores vision for 20 patients

The treatment has been developed as an alternative to human cornea transplants, which only one in 70 patients that need the procedure currently gets. Furthermore, access to cornea transplants in countries most in need of the treatment is generally the most lacking. In total, it is estimated that 12.7 million people around the world are blind due to deficient corneas.

This new breakthrough, described in Nature Biology, saw researchers from Linköping University (LiU) and LinkoCare Life Sciences AB use pig skin from the food industry to generate collagen that was suitable for human corneal implants. In the process of constructing the implant, the researchers stabilised the loose collagen molecules forming a robust and transparent material that could withstand handling and implantation in the eye, and that also has a much longer shelf life than donated human corneas.

“The results show that it is possible to develop a biomaterial that meets all the criteria for being used as human implants, which can be mass-produced and stored up to two years and thereby reach even more people with vision problems,” said researcher Neil Lagali, Professor at the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at LiU. “This gets us around the problem of shortage of donated corneal tissue and access to other treatments for eye diseases.”