Scientists at the Institute of Optics have started transferring to the market intraocular lenses capable of replicating the young crystalline lens of the eye. The aim is to restore clear vision and improve quality of life by eliminating the use of glasses in people with presbyopia or eyestrain. The Lightlens initiative, promoted by Susana Marcos" team (National Research Award 2019) at the CSIC"s Daza Valdés Optics Institute, hopes to obtain its first pre-commercial prototype in 2026.


With age, the eye"s lens becomes more rigid, losing its ability to focus on objects dynamically, a condition known as presbyopia. The definitive solution for the correction of presbyopia involves replacing the lens with a lens that is capable of imitating its function. Now, scientists at the Institute of Optics of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), led by researcher Susana Marcos (National Research Award 2019), have developed an accommodative intraocular lens that changes its shape to focus on both distant and near objects. The results of this achievement are published in the Optica magazine of the Optical Society of America.

"This new lens consists of two elements: a refractive one for the correction of distant vision attached to a deformable element, with haptics (peripheral lens endings) that capture the forces of the ciliary muscle, responsible for changing the shape of the lens to focus," explains Marcos.
The lens design has been computationally tested, using finite element models, and the manufactured prototype has been experimentally evaluated mounted on a motorized system that emulates the radial forces of the ciliary muscle. The geometric changes in the lens have been characterized by Optical Coherence Tomography (a non-invasive section imaging technique), and the power changes by a laser beam tracing system.

According to Andrés de la Hoz, researcher at the Institute of Optics and first author of the study: "the lens reproduces the behaviour of the crystalline lens, decreasing its thickness, increasing the equatorial diameter and flattening when it is out of alignment".  The researcher adds that "although there have been previous proposals for accommodating lenses, these have not demonstrated an effective change in power, probably because their design does not respond to the natural mechanism of the eye"s crystalline lens, or because they depend on the size or integrity of the capsular bag". "Our lens has achieved an effective power shift," concludes De la Hoz.

This result is one of the most far-reaching fruits of the Presbyopia project, whose principal investigator is Susana Marcos and which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Likewise, this new accommodative lens has received a Proof of Concept project, also from the ERC, to assess its transfer to the market; and has been awarded a HealthStart project from the Autonomous Community of Madrid (Madrid+d Foundation) and a prestigious CaixaImpulse Project.



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