A research collaboration between the John A. Moran Eye Center’s Intermountain Ocular Research Center (IORC) and cataract surgeon Dr Morgan Micheletti is examining how artificial intraocular lenses (IOLs) perform in space conditions, with implications for future cataract surgery beyond Earth.
In the project, Dr Micheletti partnered with a NASA and Space Center Houston materials testing program to send 135 types of IOLs to the International Space Station (ISS). The lenses were mounted outside the ISS for six months in special capsules, where they were directly exposed to space conditions including high ultraviolet radiation, extreme temperature fluctuations and elevated atomic oxygen levels.
The initiative is part of Dr Micheletti’s Joint Assessment of Intraocular Lens Exposure in Space (JAMES) project. Dr Micheletti, who practises with the Berkeley Eye Center in Houston and serves as a partner and director of research and fellowship training, has performed more than 10,000 cataract and other surgeries.
“One of my goals is to perform the first surgery in space,” Dr Micheletti said. “Cataract surgery is the most common operation on Earth. As space exploration advances, we believe it will one day become routine off Earth as well.”
Cataracts are caused mainly by ageing and involve a gradual thickening and hardening of the eye’s natural lens, which is removed during surgery and replaced with an IOL. The research aims to address questions about how different IOL materials respond to space exposure, and how sterile medical implants could be transported and stored beyond Earth.
Analysis of the lenses is being led by Dr Lilliana Werner, co-director of the IORC, a non-profit laboratory that researches IOL design, materials and complications.
“I’ve gotten lenses from everywhere in the world to analyse, and I thought I had seen it all,” Dr Werner said. “But I’ve never gotten lenses from space – it’s super cool!”
Early observations from Dr Werner’s analysis, conducted at her lab and the Nanofab Electron Microscopy and Surface Analysis Lab at the University of Utah, identified damage described as resembling cobblestones, bubble wrap and burn scars.
“These are damages I’ve never seen before,” Dr Werner said. “This damage does not happen on Earth.”
Not all lenses showed signs of damage, which Dr Werner said was likely related to their position on the ISS and how they were stored.
Dr Micheletti said the project has received funding support from several leading IOL manufacturers, and that results from the JAMES project will be published as the research continues.
“The whole purpose of this is to determine how these materials act in space,” he said. “In my lifetime, someone will have cataract surgery off of this planet, and we need to figure out how to send lenses there.”
