Restoring sight thanks to a virus
Optics and genetics join forces to restore sight to visually impaired people.
A first in the therapeutic field
A blind man has regained partial visual function thanks to optogenetics.
This cutting-edge technology combines gene therapy and light stimulation.
In gene therapy, scientists modify the patient’s retinal cells. They make the neurons of the patient’s optic nerve photoreceptive by injecting them with a gene coding for a light-sensitive protein from red algae, using a harmless, modified adenovirus. These algae move by following the light thanks to one of their proteins, a discovery made by a German researcher about twenty years ago.
In the context of light stimulation, this will be done through special augmented reality glasses equipped with a camera that records the visual scene and projects it onto the patient’s retina.
“This is the first time that optogenetics has shown a clinical result in any discipline” -José-Alain Sahel, founder of the Institut de la vision, in Paris.
Eligible patients
Only blind people with neurodegenerative photoreceptor diseases who retain a functional optic nerve are eligible for the new treatment. It is designed to replace one defective gene with another and restore vision in these patients who have become blind due to this inherited eye disease called Choroideremia.
“The Choroideremia gene is important for producing a protein known as REP 1 and when this protein is deficient in the retina cells progressively die from the outside in, patients then develop tunnel vision that becomes increasingly narrow and eventually disappears. The concept of gene therapy is to put this protein back into these cells by using a virus to carry the missing gene”- Robert MacLaren, professor of ophthalmology.
A promising innovation
The optogenetic technique has been around for 20 years. It has revolutionized neuroscience research. Its use in humans is a world first. Its clinical benefits have been demonstrated.
Three months after his operation, the time it took for the opsin gene (gene coding for visual pigment) to be integrated into his target cells, the blind patient was able, for the first time, to observe the contours of contrasting objects, to count them and to grasp them, provided he wore special glasses.
Doctors hope that this treatment will be able to treat other eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, a much more common disease.
Photo Credits : Freepik. iStock
Global Goodness also suggests:
High-quality writing is very important to members of the Global Goodness team. But no one’s perfect, so we always use Antidote.
Encourage us if you like positive stories!
