A 78-year-old blind man, Jamal Furani, from Haifa, recovered his vision after receiving an artificial cornea developed by CorNeat Vision, the biomimetic implant company said. It was the first successful implant.
The artificial cornea, which fits on the wall of the eye, was implanted earlier this month by Prof. Irit Bahar, director of the Department of Ophthalmology at Rabin Medical Center in Israel. After removing the bandages, Furani was able to read the text and recognize family members, the startup said in a statement earlier this month.
Furnai, who suffered from edema and other illnesses, had a damaged cornea, causing a decade of vision loss and defining him as legally blind.
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The CorNeat product, made of porous material 100% synthetic and non-degradable, replaces scarred or deformed corneas and does not require donor tissue. It uses nanoscale cellular technology and chemical engineering to mimic the existing cellular environment. When implanted, the material integrates with living tissue and stimulates cell proliferation, leading to even greater integration. The implant, therefore, does not trigger an adverse immune system response, the company said.
CorNeat KPro kit for artificial corneal implants developed by CorNeat Vision (screenshot from YouTube)
Corneal disease is the second leading cause of blindness in most developing countries, and the World Health Organization estimates that about 2 million patients a year suffer from corneal blindness.
“Revealing this first implanted eye and being in that room at that time was surreal,” said Dr. Gilad Litvin, co-founder of CorNeat Vision, medical director and inventor of CorNeat KPro. “After years of hard work, watching a colleague easily deploy CorNeat KPro and witnessing another human being recover his vision the next day was electrifying and emotionally moving, there were many tears in the room. This is an extremely important milestone for CorNeat Vision. ”
The deployment process is quite simple and takes less than an hour, the company said in a video on YouTube.
A total of 10 patients were approved for the clinical trial at Rabin Medical Center in Israel, with two additional sites planned to open this month in Canada and another six at different stages of the approval process in France, the United States and the Netherlands, said Almog Aley -Raz, co-founder, CEO and VP of R&D for CorNeat Vision, in the statement.
The first study includes blind patients who are not suitable candidates for – or who have failed one or more corneal transplants, he added.
“Given the exceptional visual performance of our device, the expected healing and retention times,” he said, the company plans to start a second study later this year with broader indications to approve the company’s artificial cornea “as a first-line treatment. , replacing the use of donor tissue used in full-thickness corneal transplants ”.
Founded in 2015 and based in Ra’anana, CorNeat has also developed CorNeat EverPatch, a synthetic non-degradable scleral adhesive, and CorNeat eShunt, a glaucoma drainage device. According to the Start-Up Nation Central database, the company has raised $ 12.3 million from investors so far.