"There is a shortage worldwide, but this typically occurs in developing countries, and the reason is that they do not have the resources to develop eye banks and recover tissue the way we have done here in the United States," a spokeswoman said.

About 10 million people are at risk of blindness because of the shortage, with nearly 1.5 million new cases of corneal blindness each year, according to the World Health Organization.

Much of the problem with access to cornea transplants in developing countries is cost. Partly because of extensive testing donated corneas have to go through to ensure they're safe, they cost around $2,500, not including surgery, according to Science magazine.

For now, it's unclear how much cheaper the new technique will be, but the researchers hope they can cut costs, for instance, by doing away with the need for extensive testing to screen for pathogens.

"[R]ight now they are producing the corneas in very small batches, so the costs are high, but if it becomes an established procedure and they could mass produce them, the costs would certainly be lower," a spokeswoman for the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute told DOTmed by email.

The researchers hope to refine and optimize the procedure to get better results, and to try the synthetic corneas on a "wider range of sight-threatening conditions," Fagerholm said in a statement.

"This product concept continues to be improved and additional studies are planned," FibroGen CEO Thomas B. Neff said in prepared remarks.



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