Donor Eyes Perfused After Death; 15 of 36 Retinas Responded to Light for Up to 10 Hours

Researchers perfused donor human eyes with oxygenated solution and kept their retinas responsive to light for up to 10 hours after death. The technique doubled the previous record of five hours set in 2022. Eimear Byrne at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology and colleagues inserted a flexible tube into the ophthalmic artery of each eye and used a custom device called the Eye-in-Care-Box to regulate pressure and flow.

They tested the system on both eyes from six donors, perfusing one eye while leaving the other untreated. Perfused eyes retained retinal structure and surrounding cell health for up to 24 hours, while untreated eyes degraded rapidly. The team then applied the method to 36 additional donor eyeballs.

Fifteen of those retinas generated electrical responses to light comparable to those recorded in living people, and the responses persisted for as long as 10 hours. Twenty-one eyeballs showed no such response. More than a million people in the UK are blind or partially sighted from irreversible retinal conditions such as age-related macular degeneration.

A partial face and whole-eye transplant performed in 2023 did not restore the recipient’s sight. Thomas Johnson at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the work, said the maintenance of light responses outside the body is a tremendous feat and represents an important step toward whole-eye transplantation. The preprint is available on bioRxiv under DOI 10.64898/2026.06.25.733416.