Snowflake-inspired and blink-driven flexible piezoelectric contact lenses for effective corneal injury repair

Abstract

The cornea is a tissue susceptible to various injuries and traumas with a complicated cascade repair process, in which conserving its integrity and clarity is critical to restoring visual function. Enhancing the endogenous electric field is recognized as an effective method of accelerating corneal injury repair. However, current equipment limitations and implementation complexities hinder its widespread adoption. Here, we propose a snowflake-inspired, blink-driven flexible piezoelectric contact lens that can convert mechanical blink motions into a unidirectional pulsed electric field for direct application to moderate corneal injury repair. The device is validated on mouse and rabbit models with different relative corneal alkali burn ratios to modulate the microenvironment, alleviate stromal fibrosis, promote orderly epithelial arrangement and differentiation, and restore corneal clarity. Within an 8-day intervention, the corneal clarity of mice and rabbits improves by more than 50%, and the repair rate of mouse and rabbit corneas increases by over 52%. Mechanistically, the device intervention is advantageous in blocking growth factors’ signaling pathways specifically involved in stromal fibrosis whilst preserving and harnessing the signaling pathways required for indispensable epithelial metabolism. This work put forward an efficient and orderly corneal therapeutic technology utilizing artificial endogenous-strengthened signals generated by spontaneous body activities.

Smart Contact Lenses in Ophthalmology: Innovations, Applications, and Future Prospects

“…Tsai et al (2024), developed an SCL display that could be utilized to implement augmented reality, opening the door to a wider range of applications such as navigation, AI assistance, or even providing real-time display data of health information [89]. Yao et al (2023) developed an SCL for effective corneal injury repair [90], while Roostaei et al (2022) investigated the use of SCLs for colour blindness correction [91].…”

物理生物医学—原创交叉研究的新领域

“…除了探索外源性物理刺激对细胞、组织、器官的调控 功能, 检测生命活动产生的内源性物理信号, 并揭示其在生 理和病理条件下的变化规律, 对阐述生命现象的物理基础具 有重要意义 [40] . 如, 通过利用电生理信号采集系统、膜片钳 等设备测量阿尔茨海默病、癫痫、心血管疾病患者器官的 电生理信号, 有助于判断病理进程并指导疾病的治疗; 通过 采集和分析接收指令后大脑皮层、脊髓、各器官的神经电 活动, 为神经调控认知和行为提供了理论基础和实践依据; 通过对单细胞力信号的实时检测可判断细胞是否处于炎症 环境, 并基于细胞力指标开发相应的药物筛选平台 [41,42] ; 细胞 力检测在接近零磁场的环境下检测器官的极弱生物磁信号 可用于心脑血管和肿瘤疾病的诊断 [43] .…”

Bioelectret Materials and Their Bioelectric Effects for Tissue Repair: A Review

“…Compared to piezoelectric materials, both have the ability to generate electrical effects in the biomedical field, but they have different focuses in the way they achieve this effect and in their application scenarios. Piezoelectric materials, such as PVDF nanofibers and blink-driven piezoelectric contact lenses (BPCL) mentioned in Table , generate voltage through mechanical deformation. This characteristic allows them to produce electrical signals in dynamic environments, such as during movement or vibration.…”