Despite the fact that dry eye disease (DED) is a relatively common condition, there are relatively few drugs approved for its treatment. This is because the testing of such medications on actual human eyes would be quite risky. With that in mind, scientists have developed a blinking eye-on-a-chip.

The device was created by a team at the University of Pennsylvania, led by Assoc. Prof. Dan Huh and graduate student Jeongyun Seo.

It incorporates a dime-sized and -shaped 3D-printed porous surface, which serves as a scaffolding for human eye cells to grow within. Dyed-yellow corneal cells grow on the inner circle of that surface, while dyed-red cells of the conjunctiva (the tissue that covers the white part of the eye) form a ring around that circle.

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