By Press Association 2021
The patient doing a test of perceiving, locating, touching, and counting various objects placed on a white table while wearing light-stimulating goggles
A 58-year-old blind man has been able to experience partial recovery of vision in one eye with the help of a breakthrough treatment using genetic engineering and light-activated therapy.
The patient, who is based in France, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a neurodegenerative eye disease that affects the retina at the back of the eye and stops it from working, almost 40 years ago.
Several months after the treatment, he was was able to recognise, count, locate and touch different objects with the treated eye while wearing a pair of light-stimulating goggles.
By Press Association 2021
The patient doing a test of perceiving, locating, touching, and counting various objects placed on a white table while wearing light-stimulating goggles
A 58-year-old blind man has been able to experience partial recovery of vision in one eye with the help of a breakthrough treatment using genetic engineering and light-activated therapy.
The patient, who is based in France, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a neurodegenerative eye disease that affects the retina at the back of the eye and stops it from working, almost 40 years ago.
Several months after the treatment, he was was able to recognise, count, locate and touch different objects with the treated eye while wearing a pair of light-stimulating goggles.
Monday, May 24, 2021
Share Optogenetic therapy, or manipulating proteins and cells with light, is an advanced technology developed in the early 2000s that drove major discoveries about the inner workings of our brains. Yet, while actively researched in experimental animals, functional improvement using this method was never reported in humans until now. In a paper published today in Nature Medicine, scientists from Paris, Pittsburgh and Basel, Switzerland, reported the first-ever case of partial vision recovery in a blind patient after optogenetic therapy. The pioneering study describes the first time a patient has achieved partial functional recovery in any neurodegenerative disease by using optogenetic tools.
Scientists Partially Restored a Blind Man’s Sight With New Gene Therapy
Using a technique called optogenetics, researchers added light-sensitive proteins to the man’s retina, giving him a blurry view of objects.
In an experiment, a 58-year-old volunteer with a genetic form of blindness was able to identify the position of two cups.Credit.Sahel, et al.; Nature Medicine
May 24, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
A team of scientists announced Monday that they had partially restored the sight of a blind man by building light-catching proteins in one of his eyes. Their report, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, is the first published study to describe the successful use of this treatment.