I'M NOT DEAD YET! Scientists bring eyes of the deceased back to life

They found that the human eye can be taken from the body and the function of the light-sensitive cells can be reanimated.

The finding, reported in Nature on May 11 enables direct experimentation on the human retina. Previously, this kind of experimentation had been, for the most part, impossible. The discovery represents significant changes in the way scientists study eye diseases.

The study suggests nerve cells could also be revived after death — something that scientists had not seriously considered.

“We were essentially able to get the cells to ‘wake up’ and talk to each other after death,” said study co-author Anne Hanneken, MD, associate professor of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research and an accomplished retinal surgeon affiliated with Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, California.

“We’re hoping that this new ability to revive the central human retina and study it directly in the laboratory will lead to a much better understanding of human vision and better care for the millions of patients with retinal diseases.”

“The scientific community can now study human vision in ways that just aren’t possible with laboratory animals,” said co-author Frans Vinberg, PhD, assistant professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Utah’s John A. Moran Eye Center.

Vinberg hopes these revelations will inspire scientists to work with organ donor organizations to form collaborations leading to exciting new research discoveries.

The retina is a highly sensitive system vulnerable to deterioration caused by age or an inherited genetic predisposition. Most modern treatments can ameliorate but can't cure these diseases.

“Hanneken collected tissues from an eye bank and an organ donor society and optimized the surgical recovery of the human eyes. Vinberg used his biomedical and electrical engineering background to design a transportation unit to restore the oxygenation of the organ donor eyes and build the ERG device to stimulate and measure the retina” Scipps website said.

“Overall, researchers say, the experiments generated an unprecedented trove of data on the physiology of human vision. The techniques they developed also offer a new way to study the retina in health and disease — and to test drugs, retinal patch transplants, and other strategies against retinal ailments.”

“One unique aspect of this study was the highly collaborative work from people and organizations that started about five years ago and persisted,” said Hanneken.

“We spent years getting no light signals at all from human eyes. It was perseverance through lots of failures that eventually resulted in this success, which we think will lead to a transformative understanding of human eyesight.”

Writing in the Nature journal, the scientists also theorized whether “brain death is truly irreversible.”