For the first time, a blind person’s vision has been successfully restored for the first time

This involves injecting them directly into the patient’s eye, combined with stimulation for several months by wearing light-emitting glasses, which convert images into pulses of light printed onto the retina.

The light-emitting glasses device helps visually impaired patients locate and touch the book on the table. (Source: nytimes.com) On May 24, a group of scientists announced that they had partially restored the vision of a blind man, by injecting light-sensitive proteins into one eye. The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine. This is the first study to describe the successful use of this new treatment. The patient participating in the trial of the new treatment is a 58-year-old French man who is completely blind due to retinitis pigmentosa. With the help of a special type of glass, he was able to see some objects from a narrow perspective such as notebooks, pin boxes, glass shards… The study’s authors say the trial – the result of 13 years of continuous work – has reached an important milestone for more effective treatments in the future. Dr José-Alain Sahel, an ophthalmologist at the University of Pittsburgh and the Sorbonne in Paris, said: “Clearly this is not the end of the road, but an important milestone.” Dr. Sahel and other scientists have been trying for decades to find a cure for inherited forms of blindness. These genetic disorders rob the eye of essential proteins needed for vision, causing the light-sensitive cells to degenerate. When light enters the eye, photoreceptors capture these rays. They then send an electrical signal to neighboring cells, called ganglion cells, which are responsible for transmitting information. vision from photoreceptors to the brain via the optic nerve. In previous studies, researchers were able to treat a form of genetic blindness known as Leber congenital blindness, by correcting a faulty gene that can cause photoreceptors to gradually become impaired. degenerate. But other forms of blindness cannot be treated so simply if the retina has completely lost its photoreceptors. “Once the cells are dead, you can’t fix the gene error,” says Dr. Sahel. For these diseases, Dr. Sahel and other researchers tested a new, more radical approach. They used gene therapy to turn ganglion cells into new photoreceptors, even though these ganglion cells normally don’t pick up light. Scientists are taking advantage of proteins derived from algae and other bacteria that can make neurons sensitive to light. Ed Boyden, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who is a pioneer in the field of optical genetics, thinks the use of proteins to cure blindness has taken him by surprise. “So far, I’ve only thought of optical genetics as a tool primarily for scientists, because it’s being used by thousands of people to study the brain,” he said. But if optical genetics were used for medical purposes, that would be extremely exciting.” Dr. Sahel and colleagues realized that the photogenetic proteins created by Dr. Boyden were not sensitive enough to produce images from normal light entering the eye. Amplified light also cannot be used to shine into the patient’s eyes, as this will damage the delicate tissues of the retina. So they selected a photogenetic protein that is only sensitive to amber light and inserted it into ganglion cells in the patient’s retina. Next, the researchers invented a special device that transforms visual information from the outside world into an amber light that the ganglion cells can perceive. They created goggles that scan the field of view at a rate of thousands of times a second and record any pixel where the light changes. The goggles then send a pulse of light from that pixel into the eye. The method can produce images in the brain, the researchers say. Our eyes naturally roam around in small movements many times a second. With each movement, these pixels change the light level. However, it is still an open question whether blind people can learn how to use this information to identify objects. About this Botond Roska said: “The brain has to learn a new language.” After testing gene therapy and goggles on monkeys, Dr Roska, an ophthalmologist at the University of Basel, co-author of the study, and colleagues are ready to test it in humans. Their plan was to inject the gene-carrying virus into the eyes of each blind volunteer who signed up for the new gene therapy, then wait a few months for the ganglion cells to develop the photogenetic proteins. They will then instruct the volunteers on how to use the goggles. However, they have only coached one volunteer due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 58-year-old man has been wearing goggles at home and while walking. One day, he realized that he could see pedestrian lines on the road. When the pandemic subsided in France, scientists continued to test his eyesight and discovered that he could still reach and touch a notebook on the table, identifying swapped glasses. The results of the electroencephalogram (EEG) showed that his brain was indeed responding to the visual signals from the eye. Currently, Dr. Sahel and colleagues are bringing in other volunteers to test and further refine the new treatment technique.