A team of researchers in Barcelona has developed a device that can revive eyes from deceased donors, restoring their electrical responsiveness to light up to 10 hours after death. The work, described in a preprint posted to bioRxiv on June 30, marks what independent experts call a “new frontier for retina preservation” and opens a path toward whole-eye transplantation that could restore sight in humans.
The device, called ECaBox (Eye-in-a-Care-Box), uses perfusion, delivering an oxygen-rich fluid through the ophthalmic artery, the same vessel that normally supplies blood to the eye. Inside a sealed chamber with precise temperature and pressure control, the eye sits on a bed while excess fluids drain away. A clear window allows researchers to image the retina in real time.
Eyes placed in the device within 30 minutes of extraction regained light responses that persisted for up to 10 hours after death. Without intervention, retinal cells degrade rapidly post-mortem; the ECaBox preserved retinal structure and cell viability for up to 24 hours.
“This could be a new frontier for retina preservation,” said Shannon Tessier, PhD, a perfusion researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study.
The research was led by Maria Pia Cosma, an ICREA Research Professor and Senior Group Leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, together with 16 co-authors from institutions including Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the University of Barcelona.
What restoring light response means
The phrase does not mean the eye can “see” in the sense of forming visual images. Rather, the retina, the thin layer of neural tissue at the back of the eye that converts light into electrical signals, regains its ability to respond to light at the cellular level. The team used multielectrode array recordings to detect electrical activity from retinal neurons in response to light flashes.
In pig eyes, untreated tissue lost light response almost immediately after death. Eyes in the ECaBox regained it roughly 15 minutes after perfusion began, and some maintained electrical activity for more than 10 hours.
Human eyes were tested on a small sample: 12 eyes from 6 deceased donors, with one eye per pair placed in the device and the other kept as a control. The perfused eyes consistently showed better-preserved retinas than controls.
The path to transplantation
Whole-eye transplantation in humans has been attempted only a handful of times. The most notable case was at NYU Langone in May 2023, when a 46-year-old military veteran received the world’s first whole-eye and partial-face transplant. While the transplanted eye maintained healthy blood pressure and showed some photoreceptor survival on electroretinography, the patient could not perceive light. The fundamental barrier, reconnecting the optic nerve, with its roughly 1 million nerve fibers, to the brain, remains unsolved.
The ECaBox does not address the optic nerve problem. Its primary intended application, according to the project’s European Commission funding documents, is as a platform for preclinical drug testing on whole human eyes, reducing reliance on animal models and enabling the screening of more therapeutic candidates for retinal diseases.
“The eyewatering cost of running a clinical trial can mean they never reach the market,” Cosma said on the ECaBox project website. “Our new method can greatly improve the preclinical validation steps for these treatments.”
The team is planning to develop a portable, surgery-room version of the device. No timeline for human clinical trials has been announced.
Limitations
The paper is a preprint and has not yet undergone peer review. Only 12 human eyes were tested, a very small sample. No ECaBox-treated eyes have been transplanted into any living recipient, animal or human, so there is no evidence yet that eyes preserved this way could actually restore sight after transplantation. And the stubborn problem of optic nerve regeneration remains untouched by this technology.
Still, the work represents a genuine advance in organ preservation. Eyes stored conventionally at 4 degrees Celsius begin to suffer irreversible damage within approximately 48 hours. The ECaBox extends viable preservation time and, remarkably, can reverse some post-mortem degradation, challenging the assumption that the window for eye recovery closes at the moment of death.
Disclosure: Based on a preprint (DOI: 10.64898/2026.06.25.733416) that has not undergone peer review.
Sources
- Byrne EM, Di Vicino U, Farah N, et al. “Retinal resuscitation in post-mortem eyes.” bioRxiv 2026.06.25.733416. Posted June 30, 2026. DOI: 10.64898/2026.06.25.733416
- Hamzelou J. “A device that revives eyeballs from dead donors could make eye transplants possible.” MIT Technology Review, July 3, 2026. https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/03/1140148/a-device-that-revives-eyeballs-from-dead-donors-could-make-eye-transplants-possible/