Retinal prostheses helps blind mice see

10 Jun 2025

Nanowire tellurium implant restores photosensitivity and extends sight towards near-infrared.

A project at Shanghai's Fudan University has developed a new retinal prosthesis and used it to restore vision to a number of blind mice.

Described in Science the implant is said to offer advantages over current designs of prosthesis, and could ultimately prove valuable as treatment for human patients suffering from blindness or retinal disease.

"Present designs for broad-spectrum retinal prostheses use nanoparticles or photodiodes to convert infrared into visible light or heat to stimulate retinal cells," commented the project in its paper.

"Because they require injections or bulky auxiliary devices, there are safety and practicality issues for potential application to humans."

The Fudan University solution was to base its implant on tellurium nanowire networks (TeNWNs), building on the fact that existing optoelectronic nanodevices using tellurium can show high photocurrents and photosensitivity across a wide spectrum of responsive wavelengths.

These properties introduced the possibility of an implant that not only restored some functional vision to a patient, but also augmented the human eye's natural capabilities in order to detect some other wavelengths of light, including near-infrared.

Wide-spectrum solution as treatment for blindness

The project manufactured a subretinal-implanted tellurium nanoprosthesis intended to replace degenerated photoreceptors and generate the photocurrents necessary for activation of residual retinal circuitry, so as to trigger responses in both the optic nerve and visual cortex.

In trials using blind mice, the animals showed better light-induced pupil reactions and improvement in light-associated learning behaviors when compared with untreated mice and when using light intensities nearly 80 times weaker than the clinical safety threshold, wrote the project in its paper.

To test the TeNWN device in a primate it was implanted in a crab-eating macaque monkey, where the nanoprosthesis was tightly bound to the retina in the subretinal space and generated robust retina-derived responses to visible and infrared light.

"In blind mice, this retinal nanoprosthesis restored the brain’s response to light and improved vision-based behaviors at clinically safe light levels," said the project. "Nonhuman primates implanted with this nanoprosthesis gained infrared vision without impairment of normal vision."

Human patients with severe eye diseases such as macular degeneration could benefit from an enhanced ability to detect infrared wavelengths as an aid in low light and darkness, and the project anticipates that these current results will help pave the way for the necessary human clinical trials using the technology.

"This successful animal study showcases the potential of this prosthesis to restore visible vision and expand augmented infrared perception for blind humans, and offer a safer, more effective and wider-spectrum solution than existing technologies," said the team.