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Pyron Award lecture focuses on optogenetics as vision restoration strategy
VIENNA — The Pyron Award lecture at the American Society of Retina Specialists meeting focused on optogenetics, an exciting advancement with the possibility of restoring vision in blind patients with inherited retinal degeneration. Gary W. Abrams, MD, explained that the concept, first described in 2005 by Boyden and colleagues, consists of the introduction of the genetic material of a light-sensitive protein into the cell membrane of light-insensitive retinal cells to effectively turn them into photoreceptors.