Yang Research Group’s technology offers hope to people with an incurable disease that’s one of the leading causes of blindness
Colors start dimming. Reading becomes tougher. Then, as age-related macular degeneration progresses, patients’ central vision may turn blurry, or fade altogether.
Eventually, the eye disease could leave people legally blind. Treatments can slow the deterioration, but for the nearly 200 million people globally with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), there’s no cure.
In her lab at Boston University, Professor Chen Yang (ECE, Chemistry, MSE) is testing and refining a flexible retinal prosthesis that she hopes could one day be implanted in the eye to help restore sight in people with severe AMD and a range of other retinal degenerative diseases. Using a thin, soft polymer- and nanocarbon-based film, the prosthesis turns light into ultrasound to stimulate the healthy parts of the eye undamaged by disease.
“Lost vision has a huge impact on quality of life,” says Yang. “There is a critical need for so many patients—they need an alternative solution.”
Read the full story at BU’s The Brink
Photo by Jackie Ricciardi