Common in myopia and aging, vitreous opacities arise from clumped collagen fibers within the vitreous body that cast shadows on the retina, appearing as ‘floaters’ to the patient. Vitreous opacities degrade contrast sensitivity function and can cause significant impairment in vision-related quality-of-life, representing an unmet and underestimated medical need. One therapeutic approach could be the use of versatile light-responsive nanostructures which (i) interfere with the formation of collagen fibers and/or (ii) destroy aggregates of vitreous collagen upon pulsed-laser irradiation at low fluences. In this work, the potential of positively and negatively charged carbon quantum dots (CQDs) to interfere with the aggregation of type I collagen is investigated. We demonstrate that fibrillation of collagen I is prevented most strongly by positively charged CQDs (CQDs-2) and that pulsed-laser illumination allowed to destroy type I collagen aggregates and vitreous opacities (as obtained from patients after vitrectomy) treated with CQDs-2.

中文翻译：

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碳量子点作为抑制和基于光的胶原纤维破坏的双重平台：对治疗飞蚊症的影响

在近视和衰老中很常见，玻璃体混浊是由玻璃体内聚集的胶原纤维引起的，这些纤维在视网膜上投下阴影，对患者来说是“漂浮物”。玻璃体混浊会降低对比敏感度功能，并可能导致与视力相关的生活质量显着受损，代表着未满足和低估的医疗需求。一种治疗方法可能是使用多功能的光响应纳米结构，其 (i) 干扰胶原纤维的形成和/或 (ii) 在低通量脉冲激光照射下破坏玻璃体胶原的聚集体。在这项工作中，研究了带正电和带负电的碳量子点 (CQD) 干扰 I 型胶原蛋白聚集的潜力。