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.

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.

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.