Latest news with #Nie
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Doctors Say Injecting Gold Into Eyeballs Could Restore Lost Vision
Gold, laser goggles, and a camera: it's an unlikely combination that could one day be used to restore vision in people with retinal damage, according to researchers. In a new study published in the journal ACS Nano, the team found that injecting gold nanoparticles into the eyes of mice with retinal disorders helped stimulate the rodents' visual systems and bring back some vision. When targeted with infrared lasers, the microscopic gold pieces reproduce electrical signals similar to those emitted by cells in the retina that are essential to eyesight but are damaged by conditions like macular degeneration, which affects some 20 million Americans. "This is a new type of retinal prosthesis that has the potential to restore vision lost to retinal degeneration without requiring any kind of complicated surgery or genetic modification," lead author Jiarui Nie, a researcher at Brown University and the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement about the work. "We believe this technique could potentially transform treatment paradigms for retinal degenerative conditions." The most common retinal disorder, age-related macular degeneration, involves damage to cells in the retina called photoreceptors, causing blurry vision, blind spots, and in advanced stages, total loss of central vision. These photoreceptors come in the form of "cone" cells responsible for our perception of color, and "rod" cells that handle low light conditions. When light falls on them, the cones and rods zap little electrical pulses that are sent to bipolar and ganglion cells, which process the signals before they're beamed to the brain. If the photoreceptors are damaged, however, then the entire visual chain is cut off. But gold nanoparticles — specifically, plasmonic gold nanorods — could effectively replace them. In the mice experiments, the researchers found that focusing infrared light onto the metal particles generated heat that stimulated the bipolar and ganglion cells, just like the photoreceptors would. This resulted in increased activity in the visual cortices of the mices' brains, indicating that the visual signals were in fact being received and that their vision was partially restored. And so far, the team hasn't observed any side effects from the approach. "We showed that the nanoparticles can stay in the retina for months with no major toxicity," Nie said. Applied to humans, a pair of goggles would beam infrared lasers encoding image data gathered from an onboard camera into the gold nanoparticles, and eureka — you have visual signals being sent to the brain. A similar approach was proposed a few years ago, the team notes, but crucially, this one doesn't require surgery, just a relatively simple injection (and a very advanced piece of headgear). Nie believes the approach has other advantages, too, like allowing for a far higher-resolution image with a complete field of vision. Promising as it is, though, there's still significant research to be done before it can be tried in a clinical setting on humans, Nie said. More on eyes: Scientists Hack Human Eye to See a Whole New Color, Called "Olo"
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Gold Injections in The Eye May Be The Future of Vision Preservation
Gold dust in eyes might seem like an unusual therapy – but a new mouse study in the US shows the approach could potentially treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other eye problems. Macular degeneration affects millions worldwide and becomes more likely as we age. Damage to the macula, located in the retina and containing light-sensitive photoreceptor cells, causes blurring and other vision issues. While there are treatments available to slow the progression of AMD, they don't reverse it. "This is a new type of retinal prosthesis that has the potential to restore vision lost to retinal degeneration without requiring any kind of complicated surgery or genetic modification," says biomedical engineer Jiarui Nie, from Brown University in Rhode Island. "We believe this technique could potentially transform treatment paradigms for retinal degenerative conditions." Here's how the new treatment works: very fine gold nanoparticles, thousands of times thinner than a human hair, are laced with antibodies to target specific eye cells. They're then injected into the gel-filled vitreous chamber between the retina and the lens. Next, a small infrared laser device is used to excite these nanoparticles and activate specific cells in the same way photoreceptors do. If the treatment makes it to us humans as well, that laser could be embedded in a pair of glasses. In the mice this was tested on, engineered to have retinal disorders, the treatment method was effective at restoring vision, at least partly (it's tricky to give a mouse a full eye test). It showed the nanoparticles could help bypass damaged photoreceptors. "We showed that the nanoparticles can stay in the retina for months with no major toxicity," says Nie. "And we showed that they can successfully stimulate the visual system. That's very encouraging for future applications." The approach has similarities to existing treatments for AMD and related conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa. However, this new method is less invasive, with no surgery or large implants inside the eye needed, and also promises to cover a wider field of vision. As with most studies in mice, there's a good chance the findings will translate over to humans, but it'll take a while to get there – and to get something safe that can be approved for use. This is an important first step. An increasing number of studies are presenting ways in which eye diseases could be tackled by the latest technology and science, including reprogramming other retinal cells to replace photoreceptors that are no longer working. "This innovation marks a significant breakthrough, setting the stage for future development of photothermal retinal prostheses such as wearable goggles," write the researchers in their published paper. "For future human applications, further refinement is necessary." The research has been published in ACS Nano. Study Reveals a Shocking Amount of Plastic in The Arteries of Stroke Patients Death Rate From Cancer Has Steadily Fallen in The US, Report Shows Scientists Identify Specific Bacteria Linked to Multiple Sclerosis
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Blind mice see again with gold-powered breakthrough, human trials to follow
In a promising breakthrough for treating vision loss, scientists at Brown University have developed a potential new way to restore sight using gold nanoparticles and infrared light—no surgery or genetic engineering required. The study shows that injecting gold nanoparticles into the eye and stimulating them with infrared lasers can activate retinal cells and partially restore vision in mice with retinal degenerative conditions. "This is a new type of retinal prosthesis that has the potential to restore vision lost to retinal degeneration without requiring any kind of complicated surgery or genetic modification," said Jiarui Nie, the lead researcher. "We believe this technique could potentially transform treatment paradigms for retinal degenerative conditions." The group conducted the technique in isolated mouse retinas and living mice with retinal lesions. They projected laser patterns, which were designed as shapes, onto the treated retinas and recorded their visual activity in the brain's visual cortex regions to determine whether the visual activity corresponds with electrical activity—the expectation that the nanoparticle stimulation was, indeed, providing visual information to be processed. Most notably, no inflammatory or toxic effects were found, indicating that the nanoparticles did not produce significant harm and damage to the retina was none. Moreover, the particles showed no signs of degradation months after being placed in the retina. As opposed to surgery, "an intravitreal injection is one of the simplest procedures in ophthalmology," Nie said. In humans, the scientists imagine a smart goggle or glasses system with potential real-world applications. These goggles would host cameras alongside a low-power infrared laser capable of transforming real-world visuals into accurately designed light patterns. Laser activation would stimulate retinal nanoparticles, thus enabling the brain to 'see' images without functioning photoreceptors. This concept is similar to earlier FDA-approved systems involving electrode implants, but with several key advantages. It is a minimally invasive procedure—only an eye injection is needed, not surgery. Second, unlike limited electrode arrays, nanoparticles can cover the entire retina. Additionally, it preserves residual vision using infrared, which doesn't interfere with remaining natural eyesight. Though still in early stages, the findings open the door to a new class of non-surgical, light-based visual prosthetics. Before human use, more studies and eventual clinical trials are needed, but the initial results are promising. "We showed that the nanoparticles can stay in the retina for months with no major toxicity," Nie said of the research. "And we showed that they can successfully stimulate the visual system. That's very encouraging for future applications." The research has been published in ACS Nano.
