In May 2023, 140 doctors, nurses, and support staff performed the world’s first successful whole-eye transplant. The 21 hour surgery took place in an operating room at New York University Langone, one of the United State’s leading hospitals. The full-eye transplant was complemented with a partial face transplant that included a new nose, lips, and cheeks.

The surgery was the first full eye transplant to be successfully performed. In years past, retinal transplants have become popular options to help prevent blindness and restore partially lost vision. However, these surgeries aimed only to replace a certain part of the retina, the part of the eye that receives photons (particles of light). Additionally, a retina transplant can’t cure full blindness. On the other hand, a whole eye transplant has shown promise of fully restoring a person’s vision.

For the eye transplant, the team of doctors combined the donor eye with adult stem cells from the patient. The stem cells were taken from the patient’s bone marrow and then injected into their optic nerve during the transplant. The use of stem cells is projected to help enhance nerve regeneration. The specific stem cell that the team used was the CD34 cell which is an adult stem cell that is particularly helpful in immune modulation and nerve reception. Looking to the future, doctors hope that these stem cells will help the body accept the donor eye over a long period of time.

Another major part of the surgery was attaching the donor eye to the patient’s optical nerve. Given that the nerve and eye were from different people, it was likely that they would reject each other. To prevent this, the team of doctors severed the donor eye’s optic nerve completely to decrease the chance of rejection. The team admits though that moving forward, they hope to refine the process of attaching the optic nerve to the donor eye. Specifically, doctors are hoping to find a way to guide the patient’s eye’s fibers and axons to the appropriate target on the donor eye.

When the surgery was completed, it wasn’t evident right away that the eye transplant was successful. However over a six month period, it became clear that the patient wasn’t rejecting the donor eye. This was the first time this has been achieved. By the fall of 2023, measurements show the eye is receiving a good amount of blood through the blood vessels and the nerves are functioning normally. Although the patient hasn’t reported vision yet, there have been signs of activity in the eye.

Moving forward, doctors will be looking to refine the process of this surgery to improve results and minimize a patient’s time in the operating room. However, given the results it's clear that scientists are on the right track to curing blindness.