In a breakthrough study published May 24th in Nature Medicine, Dr. José-Alain Sahel, our Chairman of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, reports a relatively simple yet remarkably effective way to restore partial vision to RP patients—one that, with further study, may soon have wide application. Below is a collection of the many news article this research has garnered. National Newspapers and Magazines (General News, U.S. and U.K.-Based) The New York Times: Scientists Partially Restored a Blind Man’s Sight With New Gene Therapy TIME magazine: A Blind Patient Regained Partial Sight in a Breakthrough Study, Offering Hope to Millions The Wall Street

The darkness descends slowly for people with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative eye disease that affects 2 million people worldwide. The condition is typically diagnosed in childhood or adolescence. Still, it can take until middle age before a person’s vision has deteriorated severely enough that they are fully or effectively blind. When the lights finally do go out, however, they stay out. Or that is the way things used to be. In a breakthrough study published May 24th in Nature Medicine, Dr. José-Alain Sahel, our Chairman of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, reports a relatively simple yet remarkably effective

By Carl Zimmer May 24, 2021 A team of scientists announced Monday that they had partially restored the sight of a blind man by building light-catching proteins in one of his eyes. Their report, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, is the first published study to describe the successful use of this treatment. “Seeing for the first time that it did work — even if only in one patient and in one eye — is exciting,” said Ehud Isacoff, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study. The procedure is a far