AN ARTIFICIAL polymer may help to restore sight to people with damaged
corneas. Patients are normally treated by grafting cornea tissue from a donor,
but the rate of rejection is high and surgeons have to remove some of the
healthy cornea around the damage for a graft to take.
But Monique Bruining and her colleagues at the University of Maastricht hope
their new polymer will avoid these problems. In a forthcoming issue of
Biomacromolecules the researchers describe a transparent polymer that
absorbs water and can fuse with cornea cells grown in the laboratory. The
polymer is made from butyl methacrylate…
