A review of in vivo animal studies in retinal prosthesis research.
BACKGROUND
The development of a functional retinal prosthesis for acquired blindness is a great challenge. Rapid progress in the field over the last 15 years would not have been possible without extensive animal experimentation pertaining to device design and fabrication, biocompatibility, stimulation parameters and functional responses. This paper presents an overview of in vivo animal research related to retinal prosthetics, and aims to summarize the relevant studies.


METHODS
A Pubmed search of the English language literature was performed. The key search terms were: retinal implant, retinal prosthesis, artificial vision, rat, rabbit, cat, dog, sheep, pig, minipig. In addition a manual search was performed based on references quoted in the articles retrieved through Pubmed.


RESULTS
We identified 50 articles relevant to in vivo animal experimentation directly related to the development of a retinal implant. The highest number of publications related to the cat (n = 18).


CONCLUSIONS
The contribution of animal models to the development of retinal prosthetic devices has been enormous, and has led to human feasibility studies. Grey areas remain regarding long-term tissue-implant interactions, biomaterials, prosthesis design and neural adaptation. Animals will continue to play a key role in this rapidly evolving field.
Bertschinger
Dimiter R
DR
Geneva University Eye Service, 22 rue Alcide Jentzer, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland.
Beknazar
Evgueny
E
Simonutti
Manuel
M
Safran
Avinoam B
AB
Sahel
José A
JA
Rosolen
Serge G
SG
Picaud
Serge
S
Salzmann
Joel
J
D000818:Animals; D035843:Biomedical Research; D001766:Blindness / Q000601:surgery*; D023421:Models, Animal; D019736:Prostheses and Implants; D019919:Prosthesis Implantation; D012160:Retina / Q000601:surgery*