INNOVATIONS
Restoring sight is possible now with optogenetics

People suffering from macular degeneration, along with other diseases that impair sight, may soon benefit from gene therapy

By Andrew Zaleski
April 23, 2024 at 6:30 a.m.

Share
https://wapo.st/3xWcpyt

As a child, Max Hodak learned to develop film in a darkroom with his late grandfather who was almost blind.

Hodak’s grandfather had retinitis pigmentosa, a congenital disease that affects one out of every 5,000 people — more than 2 million worldwide. Most people with the condition are born with their sight intact. Over time they lose peripheral vision first, then central vision, and finally, their sight, sometimes as early as middle age.

“He clearly had this career and was a photographer, and I saw that,” Hodak said of his grandfather, who became an aerospace engineer and briefly worked on heat shields for spacecraft. “But most of my memories as a kid was that he was pretty profoundly blind.”

{snip}