TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – A man blind The 58-year-old from Brittany, France, has had a ray of light penetrate his vision thanks to a new gene therapy called optogenetics. Therapy through genetic engineering of nerve cells so that they can respond to incoming light.
GenSight Biologics by French has published what has been done to a volunteer with the optogenetic therapy he developed. “It is very exciting to see the first publication of optogenetics in humans,” said Ed Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, United States, of the GenSight optogenetics team, pointing to the publication in the journal Nature, May 24, 2021.
Optogenetics has become a widely used laboratory tool because it allows precise control of brain cells. This technique has led to many findings about the brain when used in animals.
In contrast to humans, optogenetics is believed to have limited medical potential for treating brain disorders. The reason, to get the light in the head need to graft a fiber optic cable.
Several groups of scientists then tried to develop it as a therapy for blindness with the consideration of nerve cells in the eye exposed to light from outside. One targeted condition is retinitis pigmentosa, a type of inherited disease in which retinal damage occurs gradually and light-detecting cells die.
By GenSight, the cells behind the light-detecting layer (ganglion cells) are injected with a gene protein harvested from algae, which allows the cells to respond to yellowish light (amber light).
Therapy recipients must wear special glasses. The glasses have cameras and processors that convert visible light waves to wavelengths of yellow light, then amplify them so they can be detected by pre-engineered cells.
Normally, when light enters the eye it is captured by photoreceptor cells which then transmit it in the form of an electrical signal to its neighbors, ganglion cells. These cells are able to identify important features such as movement. They in turn send their own version of the signal to the optic nerve, which sends it to the brain.
In previous studies, scientists have been able to recover the genetic conditions of blindness which is called Leber congenital amaurosis. How, fix the gene that causes degeneration of photoreceptor cells. However, other forms of blindness cannot be overcome because the photoreceptor cells are completely damaged. “Once those cells die, you can’t fix the genes,” said José-Alain Sahel at the Vision Institute in Paris, who also worked with the GenSight team.
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