IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v14y2023i1d10.1038_s41467-023-39315-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Guang Yao

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Xiaoyi Mo

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Shanshan Liu

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Qian Wang

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Maowen Xie

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Wenhao Lou

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Shiyan Chen

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Taisong Pan

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Ke Chen

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Dezhong Yao

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

  • Yuan Lin

    (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
    University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Guang Yao & Xiaoyi Mo & Shanshan Liu & Qian Wang & Maowen Xie & Wenhao Lou & Shiyan Chen & Taisong Pan & Ke Chen & Dezhong Yao & Yuan Lin, 2023. "Snowflake-inspired and blink-driven flexible piezoelectric contact lenses for effective corneal injury repair," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-39315-6
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39315-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39315-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-023-39315-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Holmes, 2017. "Corneal repair: a clear vision," Nature, Nature, vol. 544(7650), pages 1-1, April.
    2. Takao Someya & Zhenan Bao & George G. Malliaras, 2016. "The rise of plastic bioelectronics," Nature, Nature, vol. 540(7633), pages 379-385, December.
    3. Shuai Xu & Arun Jayaraman & John A. Rogers, 2019. "Skin sensors are the future of health care," Nature, Nature, vol. 571(7765), pages 319-321, July.
    4. David Holmes, 2017. "Let there be sight," Nature, Nature, vol. 544(7650), pages 2-3, April.
    5. Min Zhao & Bing Song & Jin Pu & Teiji Wada & Brian Reid & Guangping Tai & Fei Wang & Aihua Guo & Petr Walczysko & Yu Gu & Takehiko Sasaki & Akira Suzuki & John V. Forrester & Henry R. Bourne & Peter N, 2006. "Electrical signals control wound healing through phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase-γ and PTEN," Nature, Nature, vol. 442(7101), pages 457-460, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liang Zou & Huihui Tian & Shouliang Guan & Jianfei Ding & Lei Gao & Jinfen Wang & Ying Fang, 2021. "Self-assembled multifunctional neural probes for precise integration of optogenetics and electrophysiology," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Yao Ni & Jiaqi Liu & Hong Han & Qianbo Yu & Lu Yang & Zhipeng Xu & Chengpeng Jiang & Lu Liu & Wentao Xu, 2024. "Visualized in-sensor computing," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Donghwan Ji & Jae Min Park & Myeong Seon Oh & Thanh Loc Nguyen & Hyunsu Shin & Jae Seong Kim & Dukjoon Kim & Ho Seok Park & Jaeyun Kim, 2022. "Superstrong, superstiff, and conductive alginate hydrogels," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    4. Yuzhong Hu & Kaushik Parida & Hao Zhang & Xin Wang & Yongxin Li & Xinran Zhou & Samuel Alexander Morris & Weng Heng Liew & Haomin Wang & Tao Li & Feng Jiang & Mingmin Yang & Marin Alexe & Zehui Du & C, 2022. "Bond engineering of molecular ferroelectrics renders soft and high-performance piezoelectric energy harvesting materials," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Nathan M. Belliveau & Matthew J. Footer & Emel Akdoǧan & Aaron P. Loon & Sean R. Collins & Julie A. Theriot, 2023. "Whole-genome screens reveal regulators of differentiation state and context-dependent migration in human neutrophils," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-20, December.
    6. Peng Tan & Haifei Wang & Furui Xiao & Xi Lu & Wenhui Shang & Xiaobo Deng & Huafeng Song & Ziyao Xu & Junfeng Cao & Tiansheng Gan & Ben Wang & Xuechang Zhou, 2022. "Solution-processable, soft, self-adhesive, and conductive polymer composites for soft electronics," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    7. Kennedy Edemacu & Beakcheol Jang & Jong Wook Kim, 2021. "CESCR: CP-ABE for efficient and secure sharing of data in collaborative ehealth with revocation and no dummy attribute," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-24, May.
    8. Siwei Xiang & Long Qin & Xiaofei Wei & Xing Fan & Chunmei Li, 2023. "Fabric-Type Flexible Energy-Storage Devices for Wearable Electronics," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-26, May.
    9. Jun Li & Corey Carlos & Hao Zhou & Jiajie Sui & Yikai Wang & Zulmari Silva-Pedraza & Fan Yang & Yutao Dong & Ziyi Zhang & Timothy A. Hacker & Bo Liu & Yanchao Mao & Xudong Wang, 2023. "Stretchable piezoelectric biocrystal thin films," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    10. Xiao Liu & Jingping Wu & Keke Qiao & Guohan Liu & Zhengjin Wang & Tongqing Lu & Zhigang Suo & Jian Hu, 2022. "Topoarchitected polymer networks expand the space of material properties," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    11. Gawoon Shim & Isaac B. Breinyn & Alejandro Martínez-Calvo & Sameeksha Rao & Daniel J. Cohen, 2024. "Bioelectric stimulation controls tissue shape and size," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    12. Jessica R. Walter & Shuai Xu & John A. Rogers, 2024. "From lab to life: how wearable devices can improve health equity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-4, December.
    13. Aditya Shekhar Nittala & Andreas Karrenbauer & Arshad Khan & Tobias Kraus & Jürgen Steimle, 2021. "Computational design and optimization of electro-physiological sensors," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.
    14. Rui Xu & Gilbert Santiago Cañón Bermúdez & Oleksandr V. Pylypovskyi & Oleksii M. Volkov & Eduardo Sergio Oliveros Mata & Yevhen Zabila & Rico Illing & Pavlo Makushko & Pavel Milkin & Leonid Ionov & Jü, 2022. "Self-healable printed magnetic field sensors using alternating magnetic fields," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    15. Himanshu Kaul & Zhanfeng Cui & Yiannis Ventikos, 2013. "A Multi-Paradigm Modeling Framework to Simulate Dynamic Reciprocity in a Bioreactor," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-15, March.
    16. Yuchen Qiu & Bo Zhang & Junchuan Yang & Hanfei Gao & Shuang Li & Le Wang & Penghua Wu & Yewang Su & Yan Zhao & Jiangang Feng & Lei Jiang & Yuchen Wu, 2021. "Wafer-scale integration of stretchable semiconducting polymer microstructures via capillary gradient," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    17. Tatsat Banerjee & Satomi Matsuoka & Debojyoti Biswas & Yuchuan Miao & Dhiman Sankar Pal & Yoichiro Kamimura & Masahiro Ueda & Peter N. Devreotes & Pablo A. Iglesias, 2023. "A dynamic partitioning mechanism polarizes membrane protein distribution," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-24, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-39315-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.