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LATEST NEWS
Optogenetic Gene Therapy Gives Some Blind Patients Back a Sense of Light
In the NEJM-published PIONEER trial, an algae-derived light-sensing gene plus amber-light goggles improved light sensitivity in 6 of 10 people with late-stage retinitis pigmentosa, and 4 of 8 got better at finding objects. Here is how optogenetics works.
6 days ago5 min read
Prime Medicine Doses First Patient With an In Vivo Prime Editor for Wilson Disease
Prime Medicine has dosed the first patient with PM577a, a one-time prime-editing infusion designed to correct the H1069Q mutation in liver cells and restore copper excretion in Wilson disease. It is the company's first prime editor delivered inside the body.
Oct 105 min read
The 2026 Nobel Prize for Optogenetics Is Also a Gene Therapy Story
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Here's how an algae gene became a tool for neuroscience, and why the first optogenetic gene therapy for blindness is now under FDA review.
Oct 105 min read
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GENE TECH TIMES
The Future Has Arrived
Light-Induced Gene Therapy Using Nanoparticles Targets and Destroys Cancer Cells' Mitochondria
A groundbreaking new approach in cancer treatment has emerged, utilizing light to disable the mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside cancer cells. Researchers at Ohio State University have developed a targeted gene therapy using viral vectors, specifically engineered adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), that deliver genes designed to disrupt mitochondrial function directly to cancer cells. This therapy uses light to activate these genes, leading to the collapse of t
Feb 9, 2025
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