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Scientists Print Retinal Cells

Posted by Soulskill on from the eyeball-load-letter dept.

Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC reports on research that points to the possibility of using inkjet technology to print retinal ganglion and glial cells. While the research is preliminary, it is thought to hold great promise for treating certain kinds of eye problems."

5 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Great timing! by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

    Last year, in an unfortunate accident involving lasers and unexpected reflections, I burned a nice dark spot right near the center of my field of vision.

    With this new technology, in only 50 years I'll be able to repair that damage!

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    1. Re:Great timing! by Cryacin · · Score: 4, Informative

      And this, kiddies, is why you need to look like a dork and wear your safety glasses.

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      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  2. An opthalmologist's view by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    This doesn't address the biggest problem in regenerating retinal ganglion cells: the axons from individual cells have to go out the back of the eye, travel about 10cm, and synapse with the correct neuron in the thalamus. And there are over 1 million of these axons per eye.

    For the EE types: 1 million wires that need to plug into the right hole, and there's no wiring diagram.

    1. Re:An opthalmologist's view by dmbasso · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even if it gets wired somehow, the visual cortex would has to adapt to the new signal... something that doesn't normally happen in adults. Oliver Sacks wrote about one patient that had some visual impairment fixed (cataract, IIRC) after being effectively blind for 40 years. After the surgery he was overwhelmed by the unexpected (to the brain) flow of visual information, which he couldn't make sense of, and regretted the decision to have his eyes fixed.

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      `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
  3. Re:This sounds like fun by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 2

    Well I hope it's a *bit* faster than that, since it looks (haha) like I'm going to get MD later in life just like my Dad. I really wish we could the body itself to grow these cells, since obviously it was able to do it once before.

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    Mostly random stuff.