Global Need
One person every 20 seconds becomes blind or impaired due to corneal disease or injury. Only 1% of these patients would receive corneas due to donors’ shortage. That is why sight restoration through bioengineering by LinkoCare may help solve a global problem.
According to WHO’s 2010 report corneal blindness is the 2nd main cause of blindness worldwide accounting for 23 million patients (unilateral and bilateral) adding a huge burden to families, communities, and health care resources [1, 2]. Often the only treatment option is surgical transplantation of donor cornea, a therapeutic option that has been unchanged for more than 50 years and is limited by the huge shortage of suitable donor tissue and rejection. In India and China there are more than 2,000,000 people, in each country, with corneal diseases in need of cornea transplant. Clearly, there is an unmet need for an alternative. Prosthetic artificial corneas, cell-based therapies, and 3D scaffold-based therapies have been rigorously pursued but their clinical use has been limited due to challenges including: lack of integration into the surrounding tissue; limited cell sources and functionality; inefficient epithelial cell coverage and non-interaction with host cells, respectively.
A severe worldwide shortage of donor corneal tissue for transplantation, particularly in developing countries, and complications with prosthetic artificial corneas has prompted the advancement of bioengineered tissue alternatives. Therefore, bioengineered corneas such as those of LinkoCare with favorable biological and physical properties, which are additionally amenable to low-cost mass production, are in urgent need.
1. Pascolini D, Mariotti SP. Br J Ophthalmol. 2012;96:614–8.
2. Matthew S Oliva, Tim Schottman, and Manoj Gulati, Turning the tide of corneal blindness, Indian J Ophthalmol. 2012 Sep-Oct; 60(5): 423–427.
According to WHO’s 2010 report corneal blindness is the 2nd main cause of blindness worldwide accounting for 23 million patients (unilateral and bilateral) adding a huge burden to families, communities, and health care resources [1, 2]. Often the only treatment option is surgical transplantation of donor cornea, a therapeutic option that has been unchanged for more than 50 years and is limited by the huge shortage of suitable donor tissue and rejection. In India and China there are more than 2,000,000 people, in each country, with corneal diseases in need of cornea transplant. Clearly, there is an unmet need for an alternative. Prosthetic artificial corneas, cell-based therapies, and 3D scaffold-based therapies have been rigorously pursued but their clinical use has been limited due to challenges including: lack of integration into the surrounding tissue; limited cell sources and functionality; inefficient epithelial cell coverage and non-interaction with host cells, respectively.
A severe worldwide shortage of donor corneal tissue for transplantation, particularly in developing countries, and complications with prosthetic artificial corneas has prompted the advancement of bioengineered tissue alternatives. Therefore, bioengineered corneas such as those of LinkoCare with favorable biological and physical properties, which are additionally amenable to low-cost mass production, are in urgent need.
1. Pascolini D, Mariotti SP. Br J Ophthalmol. 2012;96:614–8.
2. Matthew S Oliva, Tim Schottman, and Manoj Gulati, Turning the tide of corneal blindness, Indian J Ophthalmol. 2012 Sep-Oct; 60(5): 423–427.
