Optogenetic Therapy restores Partial Vision in Blind Patient

In a major breakthrough, scientists have partially restored vision in a blind patient using optogenetic therapy. The patient was suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, a rare, inherited degenerative eye disease where the loss of photoreceptors can lead to complete blindness. This is the first case of partial functional recovery in a neurodegenerative disease after optogenetic therapy.

How does the Therapy work?

• Optogenetics is a field of medicine that uses genetic modification to make neurons sensitive to certain wavelengths of light. An optogenetic vision restoration is a mutation-independent approach for restoring sight. Scientists had previously used it on animals before the clinical ....