Tag: disability

  • STAT+: In small trial, optogenetics restores some vision lost to retinitis pigmentosa

    STAT+: In small trial, optogenetics restores some vision lost to retinitis pigmentosa

    Nobel-recognized technology is being explored for safety and clinical potential

    Optogenetics involves genetically engineering specific brain cells to increase their sensitivity to light.CAROL AND MIKE WERNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

    Annalisa (Nalis) Merelli is focused on boys’ and men’s health: She looks into reproductive health, trending treatments, screening approaches, mental health, and everything in between.

    Retinitis pigmentosa is a genetic disorder that causes degeneration of the light-sensing cells in the retina. Generally diagnosed in childhood or early adolescence, patients gradually lose peripheral and night vision, often becoming legally blind by young adulthood. 

    With the exception of a subset of patients who present a specific genetic mutation and can be treated with gene therapy, there is no cure for the condition. Cases are addressed by measures to slow degeneration and preserve what is left of the vision.

    Optogenetics  — the technology just recognized with a Nobel Prize — could offer hope, according to a new paper published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

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    1. Annalisa (Nalis) Merelli is focused on boys’ and men’s health: She looks into reproductive health, trending treatments, screening approaches, mental health, and everything in between.

  • STAT+: Nobel-winning optogenetics research has led to experimental treatments for blindness and Alzheimer’s

    STAT+: Nobel-winning optogenetics research has led to experimental treatments for blindness and Alzheimer’s

    Annalisa (Nalis) Merelli is focused on boys’ and men’s health: She looks into reproductive health, trending treatments, screening approaches, mental health, and everything in between.

    It is probably impossible to overstate how complex a brain is: A network of billions of intertwined neurons forming an intricate anatomy, capable of working on the millisecond scale to perceive reality, detect sensations, create plans, and take actions. 

    “All of this is incredibly complicated, and so of course the challenge that we face as neuroscientists and as physicians treating brain disorders is how can we hope to make headway without tools that match the complexity and the precision of the brain?” said Karl Deisseroth, a Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher who on Monday won the 2026 Nobel Prize for Medicine, alongside German colleagues Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, for work developing such tools. 

    “Our perception of reality and all our inner subjective states come from cells, and so the appropriate tool that would be matched to how the brain works would be something that was fast and could be targeted to individual cells or individual types of cells,” he said in an interview after the announcement. 

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