(Robert Sanders/ Futurity) — Scientists inserted a gene for a green-light receptor into the eyes of blind mice and, a month later, the mice were navigating around obstacles as easily as those with no vision problems.
The mice could see motion, brightness changes over a thousandfold range, and fine detail on an iPad sufficient to distinguish letters.
The researchers say that, within as little as three years, the gene therapy—which they delivered via an inactive virus—could go to testing in humans who have lost sight because of retinal degeneration, ideally giving them enough vision to move around and potentially restoring their ability to read or watch a video.
“You would inject this virus into a person’s eye and, a couple months later, they’d be seeing something,” says Ehud Isacoff, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. (…)