Do you imagine that one day blind people can see again ? That the person born blind can see the first time of his life ? This fiction can be real in very close future !!! The DOE (Department of Energy) started a project called “artificial retina” in 2002 in which 6 volunteers accepted to implant the first prototype Argus One. The device, with its 16 pixels, allowed them, not to see like us but at least to bring a little light in their obscurity life because of their retinal degeneration. They have been able again to locate doors and windows, to avoid major obstacles and even to read characters of 30 centimeters.

The project is the most advanced one in terms of lil bionic and the 3rd prototype should have more than 200 pixels. For the moment, the 2nd generation, Argus II, has 60 pixels but it is more compact.

It has been tested since 2007 on 17 volunteers and the results seems very promising because they can see a door at 6 meters of distance, follow a line on the ground for example.

I am imagining that in close future, there will have no more blind in the world and everybody can see again either for the first time the planet or to recover his sight. In the past, people would say that this fiction will never happen or it will occur only in the 50th century.

DOE said that the 3rd prototype will be available in 2011 for the first clinical tests – more little, it will offer a definition of more than 200 pixels and in long term, to reach 1000 pixels.

With the fast advancing high-tech, see is very close for them. Except technology, it exists other kinds of techniques like cellular (injection of progenitor cell), genetics (injection of a gene to correct the blindness deficiency)…

Botond Roska, from Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research of Basel, has been able to give back to a blind mouse a little bit its sight. The way, he did it, was very original. He injected in its retina a protein called channelrhodopsin which changed bipolar neurons in photoreceivers – normally bipolar has an intermediary function.

More than 50 millions of blinds in the world, because of a cataract, can hope to recover its sight more sooner than they think. Of course the price will be surely very expensive and only few people can afford it but we can dream that governments, organizations… can help somehow or at least, a decrease of the price very fast.

April 22, 2009

 

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