In Israel, the world’s first operation to transplant a 3D-printed cornea that restores vision was performed. A patient with severe visual impairment received an implant made not from ready donor tissue, but from cells cultivated in a laboratory.
The novelty of the approach lies in the complete rejection of a donor cornea. Instead, surgeons used an implant grown in the laboratory using 3D bioprinting technology. This operation became the first real-world clinical confirmation of the method’s effectiveness.
The development took more than ten years, and the first experiments were shown in 2018. Now there are prospects for mass production of corneal implants and potential expansion to other organs.
Corneal damage is one of the main causes of blindness, and now it is becoming possible to grow up to 300 individual corneal implants from a single healthy donor tissue. This means potential help for hundreds of people who previously had to wait for years.
