The Doheny Eye Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California has won a prestigious 2009 R&D 100 Award for its U.S. Department of Energy-funded artificial retina project, designed to restore sight to the blind.

“This award is bestowed every year only to the most innovative bioscience programs in the United States,” said Keck School of Medicine Dean Carmen A. Puliafito, M.D., M.B.A. “We hope the award will help push the artificial retina project to the next level. We are honored that R&D Magazine has chosen to recognize that the Keck School of Medicine of USC is home to important research that will improve the human condition.”

The artificial retina, a unique bio-electronic implant, gives those with retinitis pigmentosa, a severe form of retinal degeneration leading to blindness, the ability to recognize objects and navigate in their environment. The implant is intended eventually to enable patients to read large print and recognize faces. Currently, 30 patients have had artificial retina systems implanted as part of clinical trials.

Patients now can distinguish between light and dark and see some objects with the aid of the implant, which features 60 pixels. In order to make the leap to reading and recognizing faces, the implant must feature 1,000 pixels. As part of a collaborative effort with five national labs, four universities and an industrial partner, Doheny Eye Institute researchers are now developing an implant with 200 pixels.

“Creating a 200-pixel implant is a major accomplishment, but we need to keep our focus on the 1,000 electrode device because this has a very high likelihood of restoring reading vision,” said Mark Humayun, M.D., Ph.D., Artificial Retina Program director, who in 2005 was named R&D Magazine Innovator of the Year. “With continued collaboration and funding, this goal will be within reach. Receiving the R&D 100 Award is especially important as it indicates the tremendous engineering and science entailed but also the widespread humanitarian benefit of this project.”

Humayun conducted the initial studies of electrical stimulation of the human retina and generated the original intellectual property that forms the basis of the artificial retina project.

The Doheny Eye Institute provides program management, systems engineering, surgical techniques, implant testing, and fundamental research for the artificial retina project. Researchers at the institute have decades of experience in surgically implanting prototype devices, which have markedly accelerated the development of artificial retina systems.

“This award recognizes the leadership of Mark Humayun and his talented team and collaborators and partners across the nation,” said Stephen Ryan, M.D., president, Doheny Eye Institute. “The fundamental contributions to science and engineering developed through the collaboration on this project open up great opportunities in many different fields related to prosthetics, bioscience, and biomimetics.”

R&D Magazine issues the award every year for the most innovative technologies in bioscience. This year's awards were announced July 20, 2009.
 
The artificial retina team was established through a Department of Energy-sponsored Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in 2004 with the mission of developing the world’s most advanced high-density microelectronic–tissue hybrid prosthesis for imaging. The project team consists of five national laboratories, four universities, and one industrial partner.

The five national laboratories are: Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. The four universities are USC (Doheny Eye Institute), California Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. The industrial partner is Second Sight® Medical Products, Inc., which is the group responsible for commercializing the product and conducting clinical trials.