10/24/24
New Gene Therapy for Retinitis Pigmentosa Shows Promise
New research by Dr. Allen C. Ho and his colleagues finds patients with advanced disease can recover some vision. The two-year study investigated a technique called optogenetics to target cells in the retina that don’t normally sense light but often survive after photoreceptors die. It's a one-time intravitreal injection into the eye that uses a harmless virus to deliver copies of light-sensing molecules (Multi-Characteristic Opsin gene) to the surviving cells, turning them into new light-sensing cells to replace lost photoreceptors. Dr. Ho is director of Wills Eye Retina Research and co-director of the Retina Service at Wills.