New color blindness treatment

With the success of treating color blindness in monkeys, the next step for researchers is to conduct human clinical trials and this may come about as early as 2017. This new therapy is a single injection of an adeno-associated virus to get the desired gene therapy into the cone cells into the retina. This virus does not cause the eye to get sick. While researchers also had success with surgical treatments, the injection therapy is far less risky and much less complicated than the surgical options. In order to move the research forward, the research team will begin working with Avalance Biotechnologies to create the delivery method for the gene therapy. Yet to be determined is if just treating the retina is enough to cure the color blindness. The researchers hope that if this treatment proves successful that other treatments may be developed to address more critical, vision-threatening eye conditions.