Development of Artificial Retinas for the Treatment of Degenerative Eye Disease and the Augmentation of Human Vision

In the United Kingdom, almost two million people live with some form of sight loss with the most common causes of vision loss being retinal pigmentosis and age related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD affects over 600,000 people in the UK and is expected to rise to almost 700,000 in 2020. Recent studies in the USA have shown that the likelihood of developing AMD increases from 2.5% of population at age 50 to 14% at 80 years old, as the average age of the population continues to increase then this will be a larger problem for future generations.

The loss of vision, in general, can be associated the absence or loss of photoreceptors, cones and rods, of the retina while the neural cells in the retinal network remain functional. To date artificial prostheses aimed at restoring vision are currently based on photoactive inorganic semiconductor device structures that have been implanted on the surface or embedded within the retina to stimulate a neuronal response.

These devices require complex circuitry, external power and typically suffer from poor biocompatibility and mechanical incompatibility with biological tissue. Improved devices that use the direct photovoltaic response of an implanted array of photodiodes driven by a focussed NIR input that projects the output of an external video camera that samples the visual field.

The NIR input is required as currently in these devices the input ambient light is too dim by a factor of at least 1,000 to produce sufficient photocurrent in the implanted devices to directly stimulate neurons. These devices hence give a single input to the patient and are converted to a black and white image by the retinal network.

There are numerous beneficiaries of this Advanced Biomedical Materials CDT. Firstly and of short term impact are the PhD students themselves. They will receive extensive research specific and professional/transferable skills training throughout the 4 years of the programme. They will have access to state of the art facilties and world leading academics, industry and clinicians. The training and potential placements are designed to maximise the impact of their research in terms of dissemination and movement of their research along the translation pathway.

Longer term benefits are that this distinct cohort will become the future UK Biomedical Materials leaders and be able to use their bespoke training and network within the cohort to collaborate on future worldwide funding opportunities and drive UK research in this area.

UK and international academics will benefit as they will gain the next generation of highly skilled postdoctoral researchers with knowledge and expertise not only in their specific research area but of industry, regulatory and clinical aspects.

UK and international industry will benefit - in the short term they will gain academic based research to further develop products and in the longer term have a pool of highly skilled graduates.

Clinicians will benefit from collaborative research and also the development of new and novel products to enhance the treatment of a variety of trauma and disease based needs from biomaterials.

The public will benefit as end users as patients that will have their quality of life improved from the products developed in the CDT and will be educated in novel technologies and materials to repair the human body. The UK economy will benefit from the reduced healthcare costs associated with the new and improved medical products developed in this CDT and subsequently from the trained graduates. The UK economy will also benefit from the increased revenue from medical sales products from the UK industrial partners we will be working with.

The impact of this CDT will be realised by direct academic, clinical and industrial engagement with the students allowing efficient and state of the at training and fast translation of developing products. Students will also be trained in knowledge exchange and will use these skills to disseminate their research to, and liaise with, the key stakeholders - the academic, industrial, clinical and public sectors. We will ensure widening participation routes are addressed in this CDT in order to include equality and diversity not only in our initial CDT student cohort but in future researcher generations to come.