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Twitter restored in Turkey after meeting with government officials – CNBC
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Newly restored house in Pompeii offers glimpse of elite life
POMPEII, Italy (AP) — The newly restored remains of an opulent house in Pompeii that likely belonged to two former slaves who became rich through the wine trade offer visitors an exceptional peek at details of domestic life in the doomed Roman city.
On Tuesday, the House of Vettii, Domus Vettiorum in Latin, was being formally unveiled after 20 years of restoration. Given fresh life were frescoes from the latest fashion in Pompeii wall decoration before the flourishing city was buried under the volcanic ash furiously spewing from Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The unveiling of the restored home is yet another sign of the rebirth of Pompeii, which followed decades of modern bureaucratic neglect, flooding and pillaging by thieves in search of artifacts to sell.
That is delighting tourists and rewarding experts with tantalizing fresh insights into the everyday life of what is one of the most celebrated remnants of the ancient world.
“The House of the Vetti is like the history of Pompeii and actually of Roman society within one house,” Pompeii’s director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, gushed as he showed off an area of the domus known as the Cupid Rooms last month.
“We’re seeing here the last phase of the Pompeian wall painting with incredible details, so you can stand before these images for hours and still discover new details,” the archaeological park’s energetic director told The Associated Press ahead of the public inauguration.
“So, you have this mixture: nature, architecture, art. But it is also a story about the social life of the Pompeiian society and actually the Roman world in this phase of history,” Zuchtriegel added.
Previous restoration work, which involved repeated application of paraffin over the frescoed walls in hopes of preserving them, “resulted in them becoming very blurred over time, because very thick and opaque layers formed, making it difficult to ‘read’ the fresco,” said Stefania Giudice, director of fresco restoration.
But the wax did serve to preserve them remarkably.
Zuchtriegel ventured that the fresh “readings” of the revived fresco painting “reflect the dreams and imagination and anxieties of the owners because they lived between these images,” which include Greek mythological figures.
And who were these owners? The Vettis were two men — Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus. In addition to having part of their names in common, they shared a common past — not as descendants of noble Roman families accustomed to opulence, but rather, Pompeii experts say, almost certainly, as once enslaved men who were later freed.
It is believed that they became wealthy through the wine trade. While some have hypothesized the two were brothers, there is no certainty about that.
In the living room, known as the Hall of Pentheus, a fresco depicts Hercules as a child, crushing two snakes, in an illustration of an episode from the Greek hero’s life. According to mythology, Hera, the goddess wife of Zeus, sent snakes to kill Hercules because she was furious that he was born from the union of Zeus with a mortal woman, Alcmena.
Might Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus have recognized their own life story in some way in the figure of Hercules who overcame challenge after challenge in his life?
That’s a question that intrigues Zuchtriegel.
After years in slavery, the men “then had an incredible career after that and reached the highest ranks of local society, at least economically,” judging by their upscale domus and garden, Zuchtriegel said. “They evidently tried to show their new status also through culture and through Greek mythological paintings, and it’s all about saying, ‘We’ve made it and so we are part of this elite’” of the Roman world.
Pompeii’s architect director of restoration work, Arianna Spinosa, called the restored home “one of the iconic houses of Pompeii. The residence “represents the Pompeiian domus par excellence, not only because of the frescoes of exceptional importance, but also because of its layout and architecture.”
Ornamental marble baths and tables surround the garden.
First unearthed during archaeological excavations in the late 19th century, the domus was closed in 2002 for urgent restoration work, including shoring up roofing. After a partial reopening in 2016, it was closed again in 2020 for the final phase of the work, which included restoration of the frescoes and of the floor and colonnades.
Kyiv mayor says heating restored in capital after latest Russian strikes | Ukraine
Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv, the city’s mayor has said, after one of the most intense Russian bombardments of the capital last week robbed it of key civilian energy supplies and forced the national government to implement rolling blackouts.
Vitali Klitschko said on Sunday morning the capital was successfully “restoring all services after the latest shelling” and that “in particular, the capital’s heating supply system is fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.”
Temperatures in Kyiv and across the country were below freezing on Sunday and forecast to fall to -6C (21.2F) by evening. Up to a third of the capital’s population of 3 million had still been without electricity overnight in what officials called a “difficult and critical” situation.
A wave of Russian drone and missile attacks since October has caused severe damage to Ukraine’s civilian energy and electricity infrastructure as it enters the cold winter months. Russia fired more than 70 missiles targeting Ukraine’s water and energy infrastructure on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the beginning of its invasion on 24 February, causing power blackouts and removing access to heat and water.
Four people in the southern Russian border region of Belgorod were meanwhile wounded by shelling on Sunday, the governor said, and witnesses reported loud blasts in the regional capital. In Ukraine, shelling was also reported in the centre of Kherson, the major city from which Russian soldiers retreated last month in one of Moscow’s biggest battlefield setbacks since its invasion.
Britain’s defence ministry said in its intelligence assessment on Sunday that low morale continued to be a “significant vulnerability” for Russia’s forces, highlighting Moscow’s plans for a creative brigade in a bid to use “military music and organised entertainment” to boost morale.
The ministry in London said it doubted the new brigade would compensate for “very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives”.
Moscow said the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, visited troops involved in what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine after the defence ministry this week announced the formation of a “frontline creative brigade”, including vocalists and musicians, to raise morale.
RBC news in Russia cited officials as saying the brigade would feature conscripted and volunteer professional artists tasked with maintaining “a high moral, political and psychological state [among] the participants of the special military operation”.
The ministry said Shoigu “flew around the areas of troop deployment and checked the advanced positions of Russian units in the zone of the special military operation”, adding that he spoke with frontline troops. It is not clear where.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday proposed holding a global peace summit this winter, in a video message Kyiv had hoped would be broadcast ahead of the World Cup final in Qatar.
In an interview published on Sunday, the veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said the time was approaching for a negotiated peace to reduce the risk of a devastating world war, but warned that dreams of breaking up Russia could unleash nuclear chaos.
Kissinger, 99, was secretary of state under the Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and an architect of the cold war policy of detente towards the former Soviet Union. He has met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on several occasions.
“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation,” Kissinger wrote in an article for the Spectator magazine.
“A peace process should link Ukraine to Nato, however expressed. The alternative of neutrality is no longer meaningful,” he wrote, adding that desires to render Russia “impotent”, or even seek its dissolution – which neither the west nor Ukraine has advocated – could unleash mayhem.
William Burns, the director of the CIA, said in an interview published on Saturday that while most conflicts ended in negotiation, the agency’s assessment was that Russia was not serious yet about a real negotiation to end the war.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said on Sunday that Russia’s war on Ukraine had “opened the gates of hell”, unleashing “every evil” force worldwide from murder and rape in occupied territory to famine and debt in Africa and Europe.
He said after a visit to Ukraine last month he had been struck by the “size of the mass graves in Bucha, the photos of what had been done to the people there, the rape, the massacres, the torture by the occupying Russian forces”.
Fog-shrouded Kyiv recovers after Russia strikes, power restored to 6 million
KYIV, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Basic services were being restored in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning.
Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. “Because the deficit of electricity is significant,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s Feb. 24 invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide.
Ukraine has managed to restore power to almost 6 million people in the last 24 hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.
“Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack. … Of course, there is still a lot of work to do to stabilize the system,” he said.
“There are problems with the heat supplies. There are big problems with water supplies,” Zelenskiy added, saying Kyiv as well as Vinnytsia and Lviv further to the west were experiencing the most difficulty.
Earlier this month, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko had warned of an “apocalypse” scenario for the capital if Russian air strikes on infrastructure continued, though he also said there was no need yet for people to evacuate.
“We are fighting and doing everything we can to make sure that this does not happen,” he told Reuters on Dec. 7.
In a gloomy winter haze on Saturday, officials reopened a popular pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller-than-usual Christmas tree in a central square.
The vast space in front of the centuries-old St. Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas. But officials this year opted for a 12-metre (40-foot) artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.
Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.
Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses, and that no public celebrations would take place.
“I doubt this will be a true holiday,” said Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country.
“But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.”
Additional reporting by Yurii Khomenko and David Ljunggren
Editing by Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Following ‘unexpected loss’ NASA says Orion spacecraft communications restored
NASA said Wednesday that communications with the Orion spacecraft has been restored following an “unexpected loss.”
In a blog post, the agency wrote that NASA’s Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, unexpectedly lost data to and from Orion at 12:09 a.m. CST for 47 minutes.
The loss occurred while reconfiguring the communication link between Orion and Deep Space Network overnight.
“The reconfiguration has been conducted successfully several times in the last few days, and the team is investigating the cause of the loss of signal,” NASA wrote.
NASA SPACE CAPSULE ROUNDS THE MOON
The team resolved the issue with a reconfiguration on the ground side.
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“Engineers are examining data from the event to help determine what happened, and the command and data handling officer will be downlinking data recorded onboard Orion during the outage to include in that assessment,” NASA said.
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE HELPS RESEARCHERS UNCOVER EARLY GALAXIES IN ‘NEW CHAPTER IN ASTRONOMY’
It said there was no impact to Orion and that it remains in a healthy configuration.
This hiccup comes following hydrogen leaks and other delays ahead of the Artemis I launch of the Space Launch System rocket.
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The rocket and uncrewed Orion capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center early on Nov. 16.
Sinema in speech at McConnell Center says 60-vote Senate threshold should be restored
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on Monday said the Senate should reinstate the 60-vote threshold for all judicial and executive branch nominees.
Sinema made the comments during a Q&A session following a speech at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced the Arizona moderate at the event.
“Not only am I committed to the 60-vote threshold, I have an incredibly unpopular view. I actually think we should restore the 60-vote threshold for the areas in which it has been eliminated already. We should restore it,” Sinema said to cheers from some attendees.
“Not everyone likes that,” Sinema continued to laughs, “because it would make it harder for us to confirm judges and it would make it harder for us to confirm executive appointments in each administration, but I believe that if we did restore it, we would see more of that middle ground in all parts of our governance, which is what, I believe, our forefathers intended.”
The 60-vote threshold for non-Supreme Court judicial nominations and executive branch nominees was ended when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democrats invoked the so-called “nuclear option” in 2013. McConnell and Republicans went a step further and did so for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 during the confirmation process of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Sinema pointed to the volatility of the House, specifically, and the frequency with which both chambers flip control as part of why the filibuster should remain in place.
“It’s likely to change again in just a few weeks,” she said, pointing to the November elections.
“While it is frustrating as a member of the minority in the United States Senate — and equally as frustrating in the majority, because you must have 60 votes to move forward, that frustration represents solely the short-term angst of not getting what you want,” Sinema said. “We shouldn’t get everything we want in the moment because later, upon cooler reflection, you recognize that it has probably gone too far.”
Sinema’s remarks come nine months after she declined to jump on board with President Biden and Senate Democrats in a push to overturn the legislative filibuster to deal with voting rights. The Arizona Democrat also staked out a similar stance in 2019, having told Politico that she wanted to restore the Senate’s supermajority.
While the remarks are not new, the timing is notable.
They come only three months after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which Democrats have sought to codify into law without success. They also come amid the Democratic stretch run to keep hold of the party’s Senate majority and potentially break the current 50-50 split.
Sinema is also staring down a likely primary challenge in 2024, potentially by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), as the progressive wing of the party has grown increasingly frustrated with her in recent years.
On top of her refusal to nix the legislative filibuster in January, Sinema declined to support the original Build Back Better proposal before Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in December that he could not back it. Sinema ended up voting for the Inflation Reduction Act in August.
–Updated at 11:44 a.m.
NASA’s Apollo mission as never seen before, with 35,000 archive photos restored to reveal insights
Man aspired to go to the Moon, John F, Kennedy said, ‘not because it is easy, but because it is hard.’
And photo restorer Andy Saunders has applied that same incredible ambition and determination to painstakingly rework 35,000 photos from the Apollo missions that had been stored in a locked NASA freezer until now.
The hauntingly beautiful images kept under lock and key at Johnson Space Center, Houston, show amazing new insights about life on board the rockets and on the surface of the moon.
Since the footage was kept in the vaults for so long, almost every Apollo image has been based on copies of the master duplicates of the originals, leading to a gradual degradation in quality.
Now, with his access to the source film material, Saunders has been able to shine a light on a dark corner of space and modern history, and the trove has now been branded the ‘ultimate photographic record of humankind’s greatest adventure’.
Neil Armstrong is captured by Buzz Aldrin moments after their historic space walk in 1969, revealing the emotion on the astronaut’s face. It appears as if there is a tear in his eye
James McDivitt on Apollo 9 docks the lunar module while Russell Schweickart films him. Originally, the under developed film only showed a speck of light before it was restored by Saunders
Charles Duke leaves a photograph of his family on the surface of the Moon, with his footprint clearly seen nearby. He wrote on the back of it: ‘This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.’ He said leaving it there was an ’emotional moment’
David Scott is reflected back at himself in Russell Schweickart’s visor on Apollo 9 on their ten-day mission
The film was taken during the Apollo missions from 1962 to 1972, including the only clear image of Neil Armstrong on the Moon, and it has taken Saunders, 48, more than a decade to restore the set pixel by pixel.
Since Armstrong held the camera, before the restoration there was no image clearly showing the astronaut on the natural satellite.
There is also the first clear photo of life inside the doomed Apollo 13 mission that saw the astronauts forced to return to earth in the Lunar Module, as well as images of the golf ball hit by Alan Shepard on the Moon.
The astronaut joked on his return it flew ‘miles and miles’ but the photo shows it actually traveled around 40 yards.
The contours, craters and features on the surface of the Moon are also illuminated as it passed in front of the Sun on Apollo 11 – a moment Armstrong said was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Saunders, a property developer from Cheshire, left his job to devote all his time to reworking the images in the secret archive.
The first portrait of another human in space was taken in 1965 showing Ed White leaving the aircraft of Gemini IV in 1965, captured by James McDivitt
David Scott is seen in the command module hatch of Apollo 9 in 1969 in a photograph taken by Russell Schweickart, restored by Saunders
Buzz Aldrin takes the first ever selfie in space in 1966 during the Gemini XII mission, showing the sun reflecting off his visor
The digital archaeologist used high-definition scans of the original film material, and applied modern digital editing and enhancing techniques to make the photos as clear and crisp as possible.
He told the BBC: ‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be seeing these important moments in history in anything other than incredible quality, because they used the best cameras, the best lenses, and the best film that was processed in the most advanced photo lab available. It doesn’t make any sense.’
All the 16mm film footage was captured by astronauts during the missions.
Saunders uses a ‘stacking’ technique to produce a highly detailed image after layering and processing multiple frames.
The process has allowed him to reveal things which were not seen in the previous film footage.
In one scene, a speck of light from the underexposed image which appeared to be a window reflection turned out to be Apollo 9 commander Jim McDivitt in his helmet about to dock two spacecraft.
Fred Haise tries to sleep in the cold module of Apollo 13 in 1970. The mission was meant to land on the Moon but an oxygen tank in the service module failed two days into the mission. The crew were forced to loop around the Moon and return to earth in a dramatic moment which inspired the eponymous film starring Tom Hanks
On Apollo 8, Bill Anders used a ‘clapperboard’ for his onboard home movies in the rocket. Pictured right is the original image before Saunders’ restoration
The hauntingly beautiful images kept under lock and key at Johnson Space Center, Houston, show amazing new insights about life on board the rockets and on the surface of the moon
Saunders said: ‘It’s just an absolutely stunning portrait of an Apollo astronaut in 1969, apparently almost looking up in wonder through the window.
‘In reality, it’s even better than that because McDivitt is actually in the process of undertaking the docking, and the stakes were very high. This was the first time we’d had humans in a spacecraft incapable of getting them home, because they were testing the lunar module and it didn’t have a heatshield.
‘So, if they didn’t make this docking, they couldn’t have come back. It’s an incredibly precious moment, an intense moment, a historic moment.’
Saunders has spoken with astronauts and trawled through voice recordings to pick up on details about light and colour to make the photos as realistic as possible.
They described the eerie blackness of the sky and the brightness of the sun, which he has recaptured in the images.
Tim Peake told The Guardian: ‘When I look at these remastered images of the Apollo missions, I’m reminded of what I experienced during my six months in space.
The images feature in a new book, Apollo Remastered, which is published tomorrow by Particular Books.
Saunders can also be found on Twitter and Instagram.
An Implant Made From Pig Skin Restored 19 People’s Eyesight in Recent Trial
A team of scientists say they’ve found a new way to help people with damaged corneas: bioengineered implants created from pig skin. In findings from a small clinical trial published this month, the implants were shown to restore people’s eyesight for up to two years, including in those who were legally blind. Should it continue to show promise, the technology may one day provide a mass-produced alternative to donated human corneas for people with these conditions.
The cornea is the transparent outer covering of the eye. In addition to protecting the rest of the eye, it helps us see by focusing the light that passes through it. Corneas can heal from mild abrasions easily enough, but more serious injury and certain diseases can leave behind permanently damaged corneas that start to impair our eyesight. Around 4 million people are thought to suffer from vision-related problems caused by injured corneas, according to the World Health Organization, and it’s one of the leading causes of blindness.
For those with severely damaged corneas, the only truly effective treatment is a transplant of a healthy cornea, also known as a corneal graft. Unfortunately, like many organs, human corneas have to be used very soon after they’ve been donated, and they’re often in short supply, especially for people living in poorer countries. That scarcity has fueled efforts by researchers to find other methods to replace or support damaged corneas. One such approach is the implant created by researchers from Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden, who have also founded the company LinkoCare Life Sciences AB to further develop it.
In their research, published last week in Nature Biotechnology, the team gave their implant to 20 patients from India and Iran with advanced keratoconus, a condition where the cornea progressively thins out. Nineteen of 20 patients experienced substantial improvements to their eyesight afterward, with all 14 people who were legally blind no longer meeting that threshold. The patients who needed further corrective treatment were also now able to tolerate contact lenses again. And these gains remained stable two years after, while no adverse events were reported.
“The results show that it is possible to develop a biomaterial that meets all the criteria for being used as human implants, which can be mass-produced and stored up to two years and thereby reach even more people with vision problems,” said study author Mehrdad Rafat, a professor at LiU’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and CEO of LinkoCare, in a statement from the university.
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There are existing artificial corneas in use, as well as similar treatments in development. But the researchers say their implant should have some key advantages over these options. Many of these treatments still rely on donated corneas to reduce the risk of rejection by the body, while the team’s implant instead uses relatively cheap biosynthetic material derived from purified pig skin. The material is then used to create a thin but durable layer of mostly collagen, the same basic ingredient of the cornea. In the current study, the patients were only given eight weeks of transplant drugs to ensure acceptance by the body, as opposed to the year or more of medication typically given to those with cornea grafts, and no signs of rejection were reported.
They’ve also developed a less invasive method of surgery to insert their implant, one that doesn’t need to remove the original cornea, which should reduce the risk of complications and allow for broader use in places with fewer resources. And other research of theirs suggests that the materials in the implant should remain stable for at least eight years, if not longer.
“We’ve made significant efforts to ensure that our invention will be widely available and affordable by all and not just by the wealthy. That’s why this technology can be used in all parts of the world,” Rafat said.
Of course, these findings are still very small in scope. It will take successful results seen in many more patients before any country would think to approve this treatment. To that end, the researchers are planning larger clinical trials of their implant, and they may broaden their work to see if the treatment can work for other cornea-related conditions.
Clinical Trial Restored Sight to 20 People With Corneas Made From An Unlikely Source : ScienceAlert
Implants made from pig skin have restored sight to 20 people with diseased corneas, in an exciting pilot clinical trial. Many of the patients were blind before receiving the help of this bioengineered tissue.
Incredibly, after two years, all 14 of those blind people had their vision restored and three of them, and three of them now have perfect 20/20 vision.
“This gets us around the problem of [a] shortage of donated corneal tissue and access to other treatments for eye diseases,” says Linköping University ophthalmology researcher Neil Lagali.
While around 12.7 million people suffer vision loss due to problems with their corneas, only 1 in 70 manage to receive a cornea transplant – the only way to restore their vision.
As the means to provide these transplants are costly, and donated corneas are in short supply, most people in the world do not have access to effective treatments.
“We’ve made significant efforts to ensure that our invention will be widely available and affordable by all and not just by the wealthy. That’s why this technology can be used in all parts of the world,” says Linköping University biomedical engineer Mehrdad Rafat.
To achieve this, Rafat and colleagues developed a new technique that requires no stitches so doctors can perform the implant procedure with less specialized conditions and equipment.
“A less invasive method could be used in more hospitals, thereby helping more people. With our method, the surgeon doesn’t need to remove the patient’s own tissue. Instead, a small incision is made, through which the implant is inserted into the existing cornea,” explains Lagali.
What’s more, the material used to create the implant is a byproduct of the food industry and, thanks to specially developed packaging and sterilization processes, the final product can be stored for up to two years. In contrast, donated human corneas must be used within two weeks.
Our cornea – the clear screen over the front part of our eye that shields our iris and pupil – is mostly composed of different types of collagen. This structure can gradually thin out over time, causing it to bulge outwards and distort our vision in a condition called keratoconus.
While the exact cause of this thinning isn’t known, genetics, vigorous eye rubbing, and conditions including hay fever, asthma, Down syndrome, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can increase the chances of developing keratoconus.
So the researchers purified collagen from pig skin to create a new cornea layer. They used chemical and photochemical methods to strengthen this usually soft material, making it more stable, resulting in a hydrogel they’ve called a bioengineered porcine construct, double crosslinked (BPCDX).
Refining their techniques in animal models, researchers then developed a simple method to insert BPCDX into the recipient’s cornea, eliminating the need to remove the existing tissue.
Here, the implant flattens the cornea’s buckling and provides the lost thickness, repairing the eye’s capacity to focus.
The minimally invasive surgery leaves the corneal nerves and cell layers intact, allowing the wound to rapidly heal.
Following implantation through a 2-millimeter incision, the BPCDX successfully remained transparent. There was no scar formation or adverse reaction, and no intensive therapy or further surgery was required; just an eight-week treatment with immunosuppressive eye drops and a bandage.
The bioengineered cornea checked all the safety boxes.
After two years, the participants from Iran and India experienced an average increase of more than 200 micrometers in their cornea’s thickness, and a decrease in its curvature, improving their vision at least to the extent of traditional corneal transplants.
Previously attempted biomaterial implants into the eye ended up thinning, but the fortified pig cell collagen held strong and kept the implant stable, even after eight years, the team reported based on their previous studies and unpublished data.
“No previous study has, to our knowledge, achieved full corneal transparency in vivo with sufficient corneal thickening and flattening, or with significant visual acuity gains as reported here,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
A larger clinical trial is now being planned, but if the pilot is any indication the researchers are hopeful for additional promising results that will help the new procedure meet regulatory approvals.
“The results show that it is possible to develop a biomaterial that meets all the criteria for being used as human implants, which can be mass-produced and stored up to two years and thereby reach even more people with vision problems,” Lagali concludes.
This research was published in Nature Biotechnology.