An estimated 95 million people worldwide are affected by cataract. Cataract still remains the leading cause of blindness in middle-income and low-income countries. With the advancement of surgical technology and techniques, cataract surgery has evolved to small-incisional surgery with rapid visual recovery, good visual outcomes, and minimal complications in most patients. With the development of advanced technology in intraocular lenses, the combined treatment of cataract and astigmatism or presbyopia, or both, is possible. Paediatric cataracts have a different pathogenesis, surgical concerns, and postoperative clinical course from those of age-related cataracts, and the visual outcome is multifactorial and dependent on postoperative visual rehabilitation. New developments in cataract surgery will continue to improve the visual, anatomical, and patient-reported outcomes. Future work should focus on promoting the accessibility and quality of cataract surgery in developing countries.

Accurate detection and risk stratification are paramount to the clinical management of prostate cancer. Current diagnostic methods, including prostate specific antigen (PSA) screening, are unable to differentiate high-risk tumors from low-risk tumors, resulting in overdiagnosis and overtreatment. A peptide targeted contrast agent, ZD2-Gd(HP-DO3A), specific to an oncoprotein in tumor microenvironment, EDB-FN, was synthesized for non-invasive detection and characterization of aggressive prostate cancer. EDB-FN, one of the subtypes of oncofetal fibronectin, is involved in tumor epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is implicated in drug resistance and metastasis. The EDB-FN mRNA level in the metastatic PC3 cells was at least three times higher than that in non-metastatic LNCaP cells. In tumors, EDB-FN protein was highly expressed in PC3 tumor xenografts, but not in LNCaP tumors, as revealed by western blot analysis. ZD2-Gd(HP-DO3A) produced over two times higher contrast-to-noise ratio in the PC3 tumors than in the LNCaP tumors in contrast-enhanced MRI during 30 min after injection. ZD2-Gd(HP-DO3A) possessed high chelate stability against transmetallation and minimal tissue accumulation. Our results demonstrate that molecular MRI of EDB-FN with ZD2-Gd(HP-DO3A) can potentially be used for non-invasive detection and risk stratification of human prostate cancer. Incorporation of this targeted contrast agent in the existing clinical contrast enhanced MRI procedures has the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy of prostate cancer.

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Implantable technologies are becoming more widespread for biomedical applications that include physical identification, health diagnosis, monitoring, recording, and treatment of human physiological traits. However, energy harvesting and power generation beneath the human tissue are still a major challenge. In this regard, self‐powered implantable devices that scavenge energy from the human body are attractive for long‐term monitoring of human physiological traits. Thanks to advancements in material science and nanotechnology, energy harvesting techniques that rely on piezoelectricity, thermoelectricity, biofuel, and radio frequency power transfer are emerging. However, all these techniques suffer from limitations that include low power output, bulky size, or low efficiency. Photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion is one of the most promising candidates for implantable applications due to their higher‐power conversion efficiencies and small footprint. Herein, the latest implantable energy harvesting technologies are surveyed. A comparison between the different state‐of‐the‐art power harvesting methods is also provided. Finally, recommendations are provided regarding the feasibility of PV cells as an in vivo energy harvester, with an emphasis on skin penetration, fabrication, encapsulation, durability, biocompatibility, and power management.

Astigmatism affects approximately three quarters of the Chinese population aged 65 years and older in Taiwan. With increasing age, the prevalence of astigmatism increases, and refractive and corneal astigmatism shift toward ATR. Continuous corneal changes appear to be responsible for the age trend in refractive astigmatism. The severity of lens opacity plays only a minor role in the change of internal astigmatism.

Corneal transplantation is the only treatment available to restore vision for individuals with blindness due to corneal endothelial dysfunction. However, severe shortage of available donor corneas remains a global challenge. Functional regulatory compliant tissue-engineered corneal endothelial graft substitute can alleviate this reliance on cadaveric corneal graft material. Here, isolated primary human corneal endothelial cells (CEnCs) propagated using a dual media approach refined towards regulatory compliance showed expression of markers indicative of the human corneal endothelium, and can be tissue-engineered onto thin corneal stromal carriers. Both cellular function and clinical adaptability was demonstrated in a pre-clinical rabbit model of bullous keratopathy using a tissue-engineered endothelial keratoplasty (TE-EK) approach, adapted from routine endothelial keratoplasty procedure for corneal transplantation in human patients. Cornea thickness of rabbits receiving TE-EK graft gradually reduced over the first two weeks, and completely recovered to a thickness of approximately 400 µm by the third week of transplantation, whereas corneas of control rabbits remained significantly thicker over 1,000 µm (p < 0.05) throughout the course of the study. This study showed convincing evidence of the adaptability of the propagated CEnCs and their functionality via a TE-EK approach, which holds great promises in translating the use of cultured CEnCs into the clinic.

Small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) becomes a procedure to correct myopia. The extracted lenticule can be used for other clinical scenarios. To prepare for allogeneic implantation, lenticule decellularization with preserved optical property, stromal architecture and chemistry would be necessary. We evaluated different methods to decellularize thin human corneal stromal lenticules created by femtosecond laser. Treatment with 0.1% sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) followed by extensive washes was the most efficient protocol to remove cellular and nuclear materials. Empty cell space was found inside the stroma, which displayed aligned collagen fibril architecture similar to native stroma. The SDS-based method was superior to other treatments with hyperosmotic 1.5 M sodium chloride, 0.1% Triton X-100 and nucleases (from 2 to 10 U/ml DNase and RNase) in preserving extracellular matrix content (collagens, glycoproteins and glycosaminoglycans). The stromal transparency and light transmittance was indifferent to untreated lenticules. In vitro recellularization showed that the SDS-treated lenticules supported corneal stromal fibroblast growth. In vivo re-implantation into a rabbit stromal pocket further revealed the safety and biocompatibility of SDS-decellularized lenticules without short- and long-term rejection risk. Our results concluded that femtosecond laser-derived human stromal lenticules decellularized by 0.1% SDS could generate a transplantable bioscaffold with native-like stromal architecture and chemistry.

Many human diseases are caused by an imbalance between energy production and demand.Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide the unique opportunity for in vivo assessment of several fundamental events in tissue metabolism without the use of ionizing radiation. Of particular interest, phosphate metabolites that are involved in ATP generation and utilization can be quantified noninvasively by phosphorous-31 ( 31 P) MRS/MRI. Furthermore, 31 P magnetization transfer (MT) techniques allow in vivo measurement of metabolic fluxes via creatine kinase (CK) and ATP synthase. However, a major impediment for the clinical applications of 31 P-MRS/MRI is the prohibitively long acquisition time and/or the low spatial resolution that are necessary to achieve adequate signal-to-noise ratio. P-MRS/MRI techniques. Applications of these techniques to the investigation of a specific physiology/pathology will be discussed without detailed description. Interested readers are referred to recent review articles on the applications of 31 P-MRS/MRI in metabolic characterization of skeletal muscle (10-12), heart (13), brain (14), and liver (11), as well as in diseases such as cancer (15), heart failure (16), and obesity and diabetes (17,18). Historical perspectiveThe use of 31 P-MRS for metabolic investigations dates back to 1960. Cohn and Hughes were the first to obtain a high-resolution 31 P spectrum of a solution of ATP (19). In addition, they also observed a dependence of the chemical shifts of the phosphorus nuclei of ATP on the pH of the solution. In parallel to the early development of MRI methods by Lauterbur (20), the entire 1970s also witnessed the rapid advance of 31 P-MRS in metabolic investigation of a broad range of biological systems. In 1973, Moon and Richards performed the first 31 P-MRS study that measured intracellular pH in human red blood cells (21). In the following year, Henderson and colleagues obtained the first 31 P spectrum of ATP from human red blood cells (22). At the same time, the Oxford team led by Radda performed the first experiment to acquire 31 P spectra from an intact organ, i.e., the excised and superfused muscle of rat hindlimb (23). The first in vivo 31 P-MRS study was performed on mouse brain by Chance et al. (24). Within the short span of one decade, organelles including mitochondria (25,26) and chromaffin granules (27), cells including Escherichia coli (28), yeast (29), and hepatocytes (30), and organs including skeletal muscle (31,32), heart (33-35), brain (36), kidney (37), and liver (38,39) have all been studied using 31 P-MRS.It is worth noting that most of these organ studies were performed on excised organs to avoid the need for spatial localization. Although Lauterbur has demonstrated the feasibility of imaging water protons (20), it was considered impractical for 31 P imaging of living systems because of the low sensitivity and difficulties with spectral resolution.The 1980s began with the publication of two important studies that aimed a...