Since its early days in the mid-2000s, optogenetics, with its potential to activate neurons with light, emerged as a promising technique for restoring vision in blind patients. In recent years, at least two companies have announced the start of clinical trials to test optogenetics-based therapies in humans, and one of them recently announced that patients who were blind or nearly blind from retinitis pigmentosa could detect light and motion following treatment.
Today (May 24), a case study led by José-Alain Sahel of the University of Pittsburgh and Botond Roska of the University of Basel published in Nature Medicine provides the first detailed evidence in a peer-reviewed study of a person’s partial functional recovery of vision after optogenetic treatment.
“I think we optogeneticists were all extremely keen to see something like this, the first publication on actually [a] human being [gaining] some sight by optogenetic treatment,” says Sonja Kleinlogel of the ...
