Optimizing optogenetics technology to illuminate new possibilities for vision restoration.
Optogenetics is a novel technology using light-sensitive naturally evolved proteins, channelrhodopsins, to control neuronal function with light. Visual optogenetics can potentially restore vision in people with retinal disease by converting surviving neurons into photo-sensing cells.
Channelrhodopsins (ChR)
Visual Optogenetics
Most other treatments in development for degenerative retinal diseases aim to slow the pace of vision loss rather than restore lost vision. They are ineffective in the later stages of disease, where photoreceptor damage is significant. Optogenetics is unique because it has the potential to improve or restore vision even in late-stage disease.
Because optogenetics is delivered as a gene therapy, a single treatment to each eye is expected to provide lifelong benefits. Additionally, we expect our optogenetic therapies won’t require the addition of light-enhancing eyewear, supplements, or other medicines.
Unlike conventional gene therapies which can treat only one genetic cause of the disease, optogenetics is mutation-agnostic: it can treat nearly any form of retinal blindness, regardless of the specific genetic mutation underlying the disease.
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