Intraocular Lens with Mussel-Inspired Coating for Preventing Posterior Capsule Opacification via Photothermal Effect

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Phacoemulsification with implantation of intraocular lens (IOLs) has been widely applied as a standard treatment for cataract, which is the leading cause of vision impairment. However, it still remains a critical challenge to prevent posterior capsule opacification (PCO) in terms of postoperative visual quality. Herein, we report IOLs with mussel-inspired coatings for inhibiting lens epithelial cells and then preventing PCO through photothermal conversion effect. The mussel-inspired coatings are deposited on the nonoptical surface areas of IOLs, endowing the modified IOLs with efficient photothermal conversion property. The temperature can be facilely raised to 50–60 °C for the photothermal IOLs (PT-IOLs) by near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation at a safe intensity of 0.3 W/cm 2 . These PT-IOLs display high capability of inhibiting lens epithelial cells (LECs) in vitro . Therefore, under routine NIR laser irradiation, New Zealand white rabbits implanted with the PT-IOLs demonstrate significantly lower evaluation of PCO (EPCO) scores than the control groups. The overall results indicate that our PT-IOLs provide a promising choice for the clinical prevention of PCO, thus opening a way to maintain the postoperative visual qualities for cataract patients.