Doctors have successfully implanted KPro on a 78-year-old bilaterally blind patient. Professor Irit Bahar and Dr. Gilad Litvin celebrate a successful procedure with the first recipient of KPro. (Image credit: CorNeat Vision)
The cornea is essential when it comes to eyesight. It protects the iris and the pupil, and once it's damaged beyond repair, it can lead to blindness. While cornea transplants are possible, there are fewer donors than people needing new corneas. This has led to researchers developing artificial corneas, including a team of doctors in Israel who have developed and implanted a new type of artificial cornea that integrates directly into the eyewall.
A team of doctors and researchers at CorNeat, an Israel ophthalmic medical device company, created the KPro, which doesn't require the use of any tissue for insertion. Instead, it has a skirt made of a material that allows infiltration by fibroblasts and collagen. According to researchers, full integration of the cornea skirt can be achieved within a few weeks of surgery. For patent reasons, the team won't reveal what the material consists of.
The artificial cornea is implanted by removing the epithelium that covers the cornea, marking where the new one should go, removing the old one, and suturing the artificial one in place. So far, the team has successfully implanted the artificial cornea in a bilaterally blind, 78-year-old male at Rabin Medical Center, Israel, by Professor Irit Bahar, Director of the Ophthalmology Department. The patient was able to read text and recognize family as soon as the bandages were removed.
Gilad Litvin, CorNeat Vision's Co-Founder, Chief Medical Officer, and the inventor of the CorNeat KPro, noted: "Unveiling this first implanted eye and being in that room, in that moment, was surreal. After years of hard work, seeing a colleague implant the CorNeat KPro with ease and witnessing a fellow human being regain his sight the following day was electrifying and emotionally moving; there were a lot of tears in the room. This is an extremely important milestone for CorNeat Vision, key in our journey to enable people around the world to fully enjoy their vision potential. I am grateful and honored to work with an outstanding group of people whose hard work, diligence and creativity, made this moment possible."
This is only the first step in a multinational clinical trial. Ten patients have been approved for the trial at Rabin Medical Center in Israel, with two additional sites planned to open in January in Canada and six others at different stages in the approval process in France, the US, and the Netherlands.
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