Korean Researchers Develop World’s First Smart Photonic Contact Lens For Diabetic Diagnosis And Retinopathy Treatment
Source: Thailand Medical News Jan 11, 2020 4 years, 11 months, 1 week, 5 days, 12 hours, 35 minutes ago
A Korean research team from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has developed technology that allows
diagnosis of
diabetes and treatment of
diabetic retinopathy just by wearing a 'smart light-emitting diode (LED)
contact lens.' With this technology, it is anticipated that development of wearable
diagnostic and therapeutic devices for
diabetes will be realized.
Professor Dr Sei Kwang Hahn and his research team including his Ph.D. student, Dr Geon-Hui Lee, invented a
smart photonic contact lens and a wearable
medical device which can
diagnose diabetes and treat
diabetic retinopathy. Their new research results on
photonic diagnosis and
photonic therapy of
diabetes are published on-line in the world renowned journal,
Nature Reviews Materials, in collaboration with the research group led by Dr Zhenan Bao from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and Dr David Myung from Stanford Medicine Ophthalmology.
The medical research team successfully developed a smart contact lens with integrated micro LED and a photodetector that can measure glucose concentration in the conjunctival blood vessels by analyzing NIR light. With this development, they succeeded in a new technology for
diabetic diagnosis.
The researchers put their new smart LED
contact lenses on rabbit eyes with
diabetic retinopathy and irradiated light repeatedly for a month. As a result, they confirmed that there was significant reduction of angiogenesis (production of new blood vessels) in the retina, and verified clinical feasibility of the smart LED
contact lens for
diabetic retinopathy therapy.
This breakthrough
medical device will not only let
diabetic patients monitor their blood-sugar level in real-time but also enable medical treatment for
retinopathy which is caused by
diabetic complications. Typically,
diabetic patients need to measure their blood-sugar level by drawing blood before and after a meal, and it is easy to develop complications due to
diabetes.
In the meantime, Professor Hahn and his research team have attracted attention from academics by developing a
smart contact lens that can
diagnose diabetes by analyzing the glucose concentration in tears and deliver drugs to treat
diabetic retinopathy for first time. Preliminary clinical tests for the developers are expected to be done in the firs
t half of this year.
The team has also, on the basis of these recent results, developed a smart wearable
medical device that can do highly sensitive analysis on glucose concentration in sweat, and they verified that it would be clinically feasible for
diabetic diagnosis. Also, with PHI Biomed company, they developed a Bluetooth system that can send data wirelessly, allowing patients to check their
diabetic diagnosis results on their mobile phones.
Professor Hahn, who led the research mentioned about his future plan in his interview with
Thailand Medical News,"We developed a smart LED
contact lens that can
diagnose diabetes and treat
diabetic retinopathy with light for the first time in the world. We are planning to commercialize these smart
contact lenses and smart wearable
medical devices in collaboration with Stanford Medicine."
Reference : Geon-Hui Lee et al, Multifunctional materials for implantable and wearable photonic healthcare devices, Nature Reviews Materials (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41578-019-0167-3
