Gene therapy may restore sight

SCIENTISTS have used gene therapy to make blind mice see again, paving the way for a new treatment f or conditions such as age-related macul a r degeneration (AMD).

In AMD and some other eye diseases, the cells that make a light-sensitive protein called opsin are destroyed. By giving the rodents a jab of a virus containing a gene that produces opsin, the team at the National Eye Institute in the US stimulated other cells to sense light.

Writing in the journal Nature Gene Therapy, they say human trials are now planned.