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With the help of optogenetics, researchers want to restore sight to blind people. Now they are reporting the first successes of the new gene therapy.
It is an old dream of mankind to let the blind see again. One way that people gradually lose their sight is through hereditary or age-related eye diseases, in which the retina degenerates. 25 million people worldwide suffer from these diseases. Patients lose some or all of their sight as a result of progressive degeneration. In the case of the hereditary disease retinitis pigmentosa, for example, the sensory cells of the retina, the photoreceptor cells, die off as a result of various genetic mutations. These are light-sensitive cells that respond to light stimuli
