I am so excited about this that I know of no other way of presenting it, except to use the information from an article published by the Denver Gazette. I have the Gazette dropped into my e-mail box every day – sometimes, many times a day, depending on the “breaking news” of that instant.
If I am correct, Noah Festenstein wrote the article: “Will human eye transplants make the blind see? CU Anschutz Medical is exploring the possibility.” I have taken information from this article without hesitation. I could not paraphrase and make it better. I know that this borders on plagiarism, but I figure that this once, it’s okay; and Noah gets the credit for the research and writing. Everyone needs to know this information. And, if you want to read more than I can provide, look it up.
Noah writes: “If transplanting a human eye to restore vision in blind people is a possibility, it could very well come from one of Colorado’s largest medical campuses. A federal agency has tasked the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora to pursue vision restoration research. On Monday, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) announced it’s awarding $46.4 million in a five-year contract to help CU researchers find a cure for total blindness. [$46.4 million brings a lot of research possibility.]
“ARPA-H, a federal agency, researches high-potential, high-impact biomedical and health research that requires extensive and more-comprehensive research. ARPA-H Program Manager Dr. Calvin Roberts, an experienced eye surgeon, said he first envisioned a partnership to provide research opportunities in what could be a revolutionary transplant procedure. ‘Our eyes are nothing more than the entry extension of your brain,’ he said. ‘But what you would need to be able to do to transplant an eye would be what you need to be able to sever brain tissue, to reattach brain tissues, and we just don’t know how to do that. But, then, if you actually could be successful, you could change the way health care is practiced.’
“The idea is to transplant a deceased person’s eyes to a living person, like a heart transplant — but much different, according to Roberts. Less than two years ago, Roberts said he met ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn and the two agreed to pursue the challenging task.
“ ‘Fully restoring sight is not yet a possibility, even though for more than 60 years we’ve been able to do human heart transplants,’ Wegrzyn said, adding research team partners under ARPA-H will address barriers across the nation through other recipients of the program.
“Since ARPA-H started under the Biden Administration two years ago, the agency has distributed more than $2 billion across more than 20 “high impact” medical programs nationwide*, according to Wegrzyn. ‘If we are successful, not only what we’ll see is a transformation of an entire field, but also a de-risking of a technology so that there can be follow-on investment, there can be commercialization, and we really try to close that valley of death that often is the place where so many biomedical innovations really, really do move very quickly,’ Wegrzyn said.”
This article goes on to describe procedures, etc. I thought I’d leave it there and say this – why has this taken so long? We’ve been transplanting everything – kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers for years. We’ve been replacing knees and shoulders for years. While I know the direct involvement of the brain requires very specialized work, why have the eyes not had special attention to the possibility of transplant? As a person with macular degeneration, this possibility has been on my mind for some time. Even though my ophthalmologist has assured me that I will not be blind as a result of AMD, I continue to wonder why? Why has this research not been proposed in the past? And, now, $46.4 million have been awarded to researchers with the idea that it might happen. I also realize that It takes years of research to validate this idea (this is a five year contract). My hope is that it will happen and open up a different future for the blind.
Be Safe and Be Well
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are appreciated.
*Emphasis is mine.