Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Monday February 29 2016, @10:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the dreams-of-modern-medicine dept.

An upcoming human trial will attempt to use optogenetics to treat conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa:

In the next month, scientists from RetroSense Therapeutics will inject a virus deep into the retina of legally blind human volunteers. The virus will carry what is perhaps the most monumental payload in modern neuroscience history: DNA that codes for channelrhodopsin-2, a light-responsive protein isolated from algae that — under blue light — activates cells in the retina, thereby transmitting visual information to the brain.

Forget electronic implants. If all goes well, these volunteers will be able to see again using their own eyes — but in no way a human being has ever experienced sight before. Whoa.

But the stakes are even higher: if this works, it means that optogenetics — a revolutionary neuroscience technique using channelrhodopsin-2 and other light-activated proteins — is feasible in humans as therapy. Considering optogenetics has been used in mice to implant false memories, treat cocaine addiction, attenuate OCD symptoms, trigger sexual advances and aggression and reverse motor deficits in Parkinson's disease — just to name a few feats— the technique could completely transform the face of neurology. "This is going to be a gold mine of information about doing optogenetics studies in humans," said Dr. Antonello Bonci, the scientific director of the intramural research program at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, to MIT Technology Review.

[...] If it works, what will the patients see? No one can say for sure. After all, this will be the first time humans experience the visual world through the light sensor of algae. But studies with blind lab mice may give us a hint. In one previous study, after optogenetics treatment, previously blind mice could swim out of a chamber in which the escape route was brightly lit. On average, they escaped as fast as mice with normal vision.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by patella.whack on Tuesday March 01 2016, @01:24AM

    by patella.whack (3848) on Tuesday March 01 2016, @01:24AM (#311862)

    Really, bob?
    I appreciate your funny/trollish comment that invokes gov't and SJWs etc, but I was hoping this time that my comment might get some brain guys in here. Well, I guess I'll just go up and mod you funny :-)
    -Cheers

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2