Company Aims to Cure Blindness with Optogenetics

Company Aims to Cure Blindness with Optogenetics: Retrosense is developing a treatment in which other cells in the retina could take the place of the rods and cones, cells which convert light into electrical signals. The company is targeting a group of neurons in the eye called ganglion cells. Normally, ganglion cells don't respond to light. Instead, they act as a conduit for electrical information sent from the retina's rods and cones...
Doctors would inject a non-disease causing virus into a patient's eye. The virus would carry the genetic information needed to produce the light-sensitive channel proteins in the ganglion cells. Normally, rods, cones, and other cells translate light information into a code of neuron-firing patterns that is then transmitted via the ganglion cells into the brain. Since Retrosense's therapy would bypass that information processing, it may require the brain to learn how to interpret the signals.