More than 40 researchers from across the country will work with NYU Langone Health and the NYU Grossman School of Medicine as part of a $56 million project working to achieve successful whole-eye transplants over the next six years.
In the Viability, Imaging, Surgical, Immunomodulation, Ocular preservation and Neuroregeneration Strategies for Whole Eye Transplant — also known as VISION — scientists and experts will collaborate to improve surgical techniques for eye transplants, research how to preserve donated eyes and successfully integrate transplanted eyes into the brain. The project involves more than 40 scientists, doctors and industry experts nationwide and is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a federal biomedical research agency.
Shane Liddelow, an associate professor at NYU Langone whose team is part of the VISION initiative, said that this research will build upon the hospital center’s findings in 2023, when surgeons preserved an entire transplanted eye without rejection.
“We don’t want to have a situation where we have an alive eyeball that regrows and it detects light, but it doesn’t connect to anything,” Liddelow said in an interview with WSN. “The incredibly audacious goal is for us to be able to restore vision in people who have lost their sight.”
In a successful transplant, Liddelow said that researchers will aim to preserve donor eyes, ensure their survival post-transplant, regenerate the optic nerve — which connects the eye to the brain — and integrate the new eye with the recipient’s brain to restore functional vision. He said that his team specializes in studying inflammatory cells, which control inflammation in the transplanted eye, and glial cells that support and protect neurons.
When surgeons at NYU Langone performed the world’s first whole-eye and partial-face transplant in 2023, the patient’s optic nerve was too damaged to support vision recovery. However, the transplanted eye has regained regular pressure and blood flow, contrary to what was predicted in models.
Liddelow said that findings from the VISION for Whole Eye Transplant project would also lend to further research on other medical traumas, noting that spinal cord injuries and strokes rely on mending similar nervous tissue.
“This has wide-reaching applications outside of just the eyeball transplant space, which is another reason we’re always excited,” Liddelow said. “It gives us many, many hits on a goal.”
Contact Lekhya Kantheti at [email protected].
