Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2021;1293:545-555. doi: 10.1007/978-981-15-8763-4_38.
The loss of photoreceptor cells caused by retinal degenerative diseases leads to blindness. The optogenetic approach for restoring vision involves converting the surviving inner retinal neurons into photosensitive cells, thus imparting light sensitivity to the retina following the loss of photoreceptor cells. Our first demonstration of the feasibility of such an approach involved expressing ChR2 in the retinal ganglion cells of blind mice; since then, optogenetic vision restoration has been demonstrated by using a variety of optogenetic tools, especially microbial channelrhodopsins (ChRs). A ChR-based optogenetic therapy for treating blindness has advanced to clinical trials. In this chapter, we review our early proof-of-concept study of optogenetic vision restoration. We also discuss our studies for developing better ChR tools and for restoring intrinsic visual processing features in retinas with degenerated photoreceptors.
视网膜退行性疾病引起的光感受器细胞丧失会导致失明。光遗传学恢复视力的方法包括将存活的内视网膜神经元转化为光敏感细胞，从而在光感受器细胞丧失后赋予视网膜光敏感性。我们首次证明了这种方法的可行性，即将 ChR2 表达在盲鼠的视网膜神经节细胞中；此后，通过使用各种光遗传学工具，特别是微生物通道视紫红质（ChRs），已经证明了光遗传学视觉恢复。基于 ChR 的光遗传学疗法已进入临床试验阶段。在本章中，我们回顾了我们关于光遗传学视觉恢复的早期概念验证研究。我们还讨论了我们在开发更好的 ChR 工具以及恢复具有退行性光感受器的视网膜内在视觉处理特征方面的研究。
