2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology of Medicine was to Ardem Patapoutian for his discovery of the family of mechanosensitive PIEZO ion channels, which function as mechanoreceptors feeling the environment in senses such as touch, pain, and proprioception, and respond to these mechanical forces by opening its channels and evoking nerve impulse discharges.

PIEZO2 channels are present in corneal neurons and are directly involved in acute corneal mechano-nociception.

• Injury of nociceptor nerves after anterior segment eye surgery often evokes spontaneous, aberrant activity at the neuromas formed by regenerating axons, which become abnormally sensitive to mechanical force, evoking neuropathic pain.
• Lubrication deficit in Dry Eye Disease enhances mechanical shear forces produced by blinking which cause corneal attrition and augments corneal nociceptor activity, evoking pain sensations and neurogenic inflammation.

Neuromodulation by PIEZO2 blockade in the eye surface offers a revolutionary approach for the treatment of ocular pain associated with mechanical irritation accompanying many ocular surface disorders.