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Taiwan has become an aging society. Due to the increasing prevalence of myopia and chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertnetion, pathological changes of retina, macula, and vitreous body are being more and more common. These pathological changes may also turn into ophthalmological diseases such as vitreous hemorrhage, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, etc. Most of these ophthalmological diseases require removal of original vitreous body through vitrectomy in order to conduct further treatments. Once the patients received vitrectomy, the vitreous body may be completely or mostly removed. Thus, vitreous substitutes, which are used to fill in the empty vitreous cavity, maintain the shape of their bulbus oculi and provide enough supprts to the retina. Current clinical options of vitreous substitutes include gas and silicone oil, For example, patients receing gaseous subtitutes need to hold a face-down position, and the short filling time may result in recurrent retinal detachment. Moreover, silicone oil substitutes may result in turbidity from emulsion, which in turn affects the transmittance of light, thus requiring a second surgery to remove the turbid silicone oil substitutes. And this increases cost of medical care and affects patients’ quality of life. BioFirst’s “Artifitial Vitreous Substitute”, exclusively licensed by National Health Research Institute, is a first-in-class biocompatible hydrogel vitreous substitute. It is developed to overcome current clinical problems caused by current vitreous substitutes. BioFirst’s “Vitreous Substitute” is injectable and biodegradable. It minimizes the wounds from surgeries and prevents patients from risks of further sugeries. With refractive index similar to vitreous, our product reduces the effects of change of diopter. It does not require patients to remain face-dowm position, and patients recovers faster after surgeries. Our product saves a great deal of medical care service and social resourses. We also won the 7th National Innovation Award given by Ministry of Science and Technology, Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry, and Acedemia Sinica.
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3F, No. 18, Ln. 321, Yangguang St., Neihu Dist., Taipei City 114067, Taiwan |