New method to cure blindness

The 18-year-old Stephen Howarth, from Bolton, England, was blind almost completely, for the first time going home from the train station at night. It is the result of the world's first clinical trial of a new gene therapy, conducted by Moorfields Eye Hospital Eye Hospital experts and the University of London Eye Institute.

Stephen was diagnosed with congenital blindness due to RPE65 gene fault, so the cells sensing light in his retina gradually died without recovering. Only in the day when he had strong light did he see dimly. Until now there was no treatment that could help his eyesight better, so he was likely to be completely blind.

Medical experts in London injected the retina into three volunteers who participated in testing a virus-containing composition with an exact copy of the RPE65 gene. After a few months, the doctors checked their eyesight. The two of them did not have a better turn but the condition was not worse, and Stephen had very good results. If before he used this method, he would bump into the wall when trying to go in the dark maze for experiment and it took a minute to go 1 meter, then after he was injected, he went through the maze at a fast speed more and without mistakes.

Stephen Howarth (Photo: sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Stephen was then able to walk around the city by himself when it was dark. If he had only seen the light of bright streetlights and car headlights, he could now distinguish the signs on the road, the line, the outline and the cracks on the road surface. .

In subsequent experiments, the team also wanted to test this therapy in children because when the disease is detected earlier, the ability to improve vision is much greater. Researcher Robin Ali, who led the study, said they would test the therapy for other retinal-related diseases.