Groundbreaking optogenetic therapy restores partial eyesight in blind patient! Learn how this light-based treatment offers new hope for vision loss.
Light therapy has been shown to help with mental health and skin aging, and for some it may also benefit one of the five senses: sight. Using light for vision problems is not new; photo-syntonic light therapy has been used clinically for more than 70 years to address depth perception, lazy eye, and limited peripheral vision. Until recently, however, it had not been used to restore lost eyesight.
Enter optogenetic therapy, a light-based approach that is producing encouraging results in people with blindness. One study describes it as “a new approach that combines neurobiology and genetic engineering techniques to provide light-mediated control over cell physiology in degenerating retinal cells that are normally insensitive to light.” Put simply, optogenetic therapy uses light to control specific cells.
Developed in the early 2000s, the technique was not tested in humans until one man volunteered to be the first trial participant. The outcome: partial yet functional return of vision in a person who had been completely blind.
“The eye is a very complex system that allows our vision to adapt to different levels of light,” says first and corresponding author José-Alain Sahel, chair of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, director of the UPMC Eye Center, and professor at Sorbonne University. “But complex systems are very fragile—so when vision disappears, few treatments remain aside from prosthetics or reactivating surviving retinal cells.”
Instead of repairing individual light-sensitive genes, the researchers chose to stimulate nerve cells directly. They injected a light-sensitive algal protein called channelrhodopsin into the eye, targeting ganglion cells—neurons that relay visual signals from the retina to the brain.
To deliver the correct wavelength, the team engineered goggles that convert incoming light into amber light and project it onto the retina in real time.
After several months of training, the once-blind participant could locate and identify objects while wearing the goggles. “Initially, the patient didn’t find the glasses very useful,” Sahel notes, “but after a few months he started to see the white stripes on a crosswalk and, with further sessions, could recognize other objects, large and small.”
So, can red light therapy improve vision? Early evidence suggests it may. With an estimated 26 million people worldwide living with total vision loss, this approach offers hope, though larger studies are needed.
Optogenetic therapy overview – PMC Search ongoing vision trials – ClinicalTrials.gov
“Blindness is one of the most life-altering conditions a person can experience,” says William Hauswirth, an ophthalmologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Restoring useful vision could make an almost unimaginable improvement in quality of life.”
This is only the beginning for red-light therapy in vision care. Further clinical studies may follow, potentially expanding access to light-therapy products for the vision-impaired community.
Researchers are just starting to explore the possible benefits of light therapy. Led Mask has supported red-light applications for mental health, skin conditions, and general wellness.
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