Project description
Nitinol implants bolster the fight against progressive eye disease
The cornea is the eye’s outermost lens, sort of a window onto the world that controls and focuses the light entering the eye by bending or refracting it. It is responsible for about 65-75 % of the eye’s total focusing power, so a change in the shape of the cornea has important impact on a person’s ability to see clearly. Keratoconus is a progressive eye disease resulting in a bulging, cone-shaped cornea and significant refractive error that is difficult to treat with ocular surgery or corneal transplantation. The EU-funded HUMANeye project pulls together two SMEs and two leading European ophthalmic care centres to bring a revolutionary treatment to market. The team’s implantable dome-shaped corneal net made from medical-grade nitinol not only corrects the refractive error, it stops disease progression. With EU support, scientists are focusing on a winner.
Objective
The global costs from visual refractive errors will reach some €1.2 trillion in 2019. This type of disability is on the increase and it is predicted that it will affect 10% of the World population by 2050. Pathological corneal shape deformations (PCSD) are a common cause of severe refractive error that tend to occur in young adults, considerably reducing both their quality of life and work productivity. Current treatment options are severely limited. The compromised cornea cannot withstand aggressive reductive laser surgery. Corneal transplantation gives highly unpredictable results, necessitating multiple operations that lead to spiraling treatment costs of over €14k per patient.
HUMANEYE is a breakthrough dome-shaped corneal net fashioned in medical-grade titanium. Implanted deep within the cornea, it potently corrects refractive error and halts disease progression in PCSD. It uniquely matches the natural architecture of tissue layers throughout the entire tissue, leading to simple reproducible implantation, 70% higher success rates and 66% stronger refractive correction than current ring-shaped implants on the market today.
The HUMANeye project unites two hi-tech SMEs, to manufacture the technology and push it to market, with two leading European ophthalmic care centres to prove its worth in the clinic. From HUMANEYE launch in 2023 until 2027, our SME partners will together generate €103.6m in cumulative revenues and €54.9m in profits. Rollout with an established commercial license partner will generate 21 internal and 48 external jobs in our value chain. 938k successfully operations will help 295k patients to better employment and save €20.1bn in direct public healthcare and indirect productivity costs.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinesurgery
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineophthalmology
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinetransplantation
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologyimplants
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IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
08024 Barcelona
Spain