Can We Prevent Deteriorating Eyesight?
75% of the adult world will or already needs vision correction. Think about that… it means that 3 of every 4 people will have some kind of sight impairment as they age. It means that 3 of the ghostbusters have or already need glasses (how does one go about fighting the spirits of the dead without being able to see)?
For the most part, needing some visual aid is a natural thing. Most of the time, when we think of the average older person we think of graying hair, crows feet, and yes glasses!
And for the most part, reading glasses is where the visual impairment stops. After all, most of us don’t think about how well we can see the street name on the corner of our block.
What if instead of when you get older having to walk around with miniature magnifying glasses stuck to your face, you started losing your eyesight permanently.
That’s what it is like for most glaucoma patients. About 200,000 people in the US are diagnosed with glaucoma every year, an eye disease that does precisely that. But it is hard to imagine that happening, right?
Well, for about 3 million Americans that is the reality, the worst part is that some of the detection systems won’t tell you how far you are from losing your eyesight. Depending on the time of day, you may not be even diagnosed at all.
People can be genetically predisposed to having glaucoma, but the reality is that anyone can get glaucoma. Furthermore, once you lose the eyesight, it is gone forever.
Glaucoma is caused by a buildup of eye fluid (aqueous humor) behind the eyes. The fluid usually gets drained out through tissue in the inner eye (the trabecular meshwork). If the drainage system doesn’t work correctly or the fluid production is in excess, the fluid cannot flow out at the standard rate, and eye pressure goes up. Once the pressure gets too high, it causes damage to the optic nerve. As the optic nerve deteriorates, blind spots start to appear in one’s vision.
What’s more, glaucoma develops slowly. That means that symptoms may show up too late or develop after an eye exam where one won’t know what’s wrong until the optic nerve has already been damaged too much. Once the vision is lost, it cannot be gotten back, so it’s essential to diagnose and treat glaucoma as early as possible. If not, it can lead to permanent blindness.
Currently, diagnosing glaucoma is done through 6 methods; however, the two most common ways are by widening the pupils to take a look at the optic nerve (an eye exam) and doing a tonometry test. The tonometry test consists of numbing the eye, holding a pencil-shaped device to the eye, and gently pressing on it to measure pressure.
The problem with these detection methods is that they are more often than not, inaccurate, which means that although it can show whether or not a patient has glaucoma, the measure of exactly how bad it is, takes much more time. Coupled with the fact that glaucoma develops over time, the exam’s timing could be too late or too early to tell.
If the severity or worsening of the condition goes unnoticed, the patient will eventually lose their eyesight.
Over the past few months, I worked on a solution to the problem of early glaucoma detection.
Biosensors combined with genetic engineering could provide accurate and continuous detection of ocular pressure so that patients who are genetically predisposed to glaucoma would have a much higher chance of catching increasing eye-pressure before it becomes a problem.
To understand this potential solution, the genetically engineered cells must be explained. The biosensor properties must be thought through. We want to know what goes into our bodies.
The genetically engineered nerve cell:
- the cell is engineered to detect changes in pressure
- cell wall contracts when pressure is exerted
- specifically engineered protein is released when pressure is exerted on the cell
The choice of a nerve cell isn’t arbitrary. Although all cells can be genetically engineered, I chose a nerve cell to be more compatible with the chemistry in the eye and more susceptible to change.
To start the formation of the sensor, a whole nerve cell would be engineered to respond to tiny pressure changes. The cell’s wall would be made so that when pressure was exerted, the pressure change would cause an immediate reaction in the cell itself, such as a contraction or the release of a specific protein (that would be engineered to react to a pressure change). The bigger the contraction of the cell and the more protein being released, the more pressure is being exerted.
Ideally, the nerve cell would not cause any irritation in the eye and would fit seamlessly with the make-up of the inner eye.
Turning the engineered cell into a biosensor to detect pressure:
- An engineered response from cell causes a signal to be sent to the transducer in the biosensor
- either the contracted cell or proteins released, cause a chain reaction that signals the transducer in the biosensor
- the transducer sends an electrical signal to a computer or other electrical device that then outputs a readable pressure
The engineered cell could sense pressure all it wants. However, without a device to monitor and send the readout of the cell’s contraction, the engineered cell would not be adding anything of value to the eye or the pressure detection process.
This is why the nerve cell would be turned into a biosensor. The cell itself would be detecting the changes!
A slight deviation: Biosensors
A biosensor is a microscopic sensor that is made up of two main components: a biological part such as a cell, enzyme, protein, RNA, or even DNA, and an electrical component that measures the substance being detected by the cell and transfers it into a readout.
Whole-cell sensors use either electrochemical or optical detection to measure the readout of the specific substance being detected. In this case, a protein and pressure exerted on the cell. The whole-cell biosensor links the measurement of a specific substance that affects the pressure or another physical aspect of the cell to a transducer (a device that converts one form of energy into another), which then gives off an optical or electrochemical readout to be observed.
A pressure sensing biosensor:
Instead of using a regular whole-cell biosensor, the combination of a more sensitive nerve cell that would react to pressure, and biosensor technology would allow for a pressure sensing biosensor. This means that when the pressure in the eye gets to be borderline high, to the point where the pressure could potentially cause problems, the biosensor will send out a signal to alert a mobile device.
Pressure in the inner eye is susceptible to change; thus, the sensor would take data from glaucoma patients, and daily readouts to form a prediction to establish a level at which fluid eye pressure becomes dangerous.
It has been shown that Glaucoma is related to genetics, and specifically, early development of glaucoma has been shown to come from a mutation in the myocilin gene. Thus, the characterization of people that would receive this sensor would be based on their genetics (whether or not their relatives have or had glaucoma) and previous eye tests and the patient’s own willingness to have the sensor implanted.
Not everything can be figured out 100% yet:
Although this solution covers many of the complications and problems that come with spread out eye tests, the biosensor itself also has some challenges in its deployment. These include getting the biosensor implanted into the eye, or getting it to travel to the back of the eye and the biosensor’s actual compatibility with the eye versus the actual interaction. In addition, the chemistry of the eye may or may not affect the sensor as well.
How did I learn all this?
I am part of an organization called The Knowledge Society (TKS for short). It is the equivalent of an Olympic training ground for high school students, where they train us on mindsets, emerging technologies, and skills.
I wouldn’t have been able to propose (let alone develop) my idea if it wasn’t for TKS. They gave me the tools to figure out what I was interested in, developing my ideas, and putting those ideas out there!
Contact me @:
- liasepiashvilii@gmail.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-sepiashvili-486a20192/