Nat Med: For the first time in humans, it has been confirmed that optogenetics can restore part of the vision of blind patients

May 28, 2021/Bio Valley BIOON/---Since the early mid-2000s, optogenetics has become a promising technology to restore the vision of blind patients by virtue of its potential to activate neurons with light.

In a new case study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States and the University of Basel in Switzerland provided detailed evidence for the first time that a person had visual functional recovery after optogenetic treatment.

The 58-year-old man described in this paper is the first participant in a clinical trial partially funded by GenSight Biologics to evaluate the safety of the therapy, followed by its efficacy.

In order to compensate for the loss of these photoreceptor cells, the authors tried to make existing retinal ganglion cells-under healthy conditions, these cells receive information from the photoreceptor cells through other intermediate cells-to respond to light.

Specifically, they injected the gene for the artificial light-sensitive channel protein ChrimsonR originally from Chlamydomonas noctigama into the central retina of the patient's most damaged eye.

Combining viral vector injections with the use of goggles is not enough to restore vision - this patient still needs vision training to learn to control his eye movements and to associate the visual perception of objects with their physical location.

Picture from Nature Medicine, 2021, doi:10.

In order to rigorously assess the partial improvement in vision, the authors performed different tests in which the patient was asked to perceive, locate, count, and touch one, two, or three objects on a white table under different conditions (A notebook, a staple box or a set of balls).

The authors pointed out that this patient’s vision improvement was limited and could not provide sufficient resolution to recognize faces or read.

Reference materials:

José-Alain Sahel et al.