Empowering Retinal Gene Therapy with a Specific Promoter for Human Rod and Cone ON-Bipolar Cells

Hulliger, Elmar Carlos; Hostettler, Simon Manuel; Kleinlogel, Sonja (2020). Empowering Retinal Gene Therapy with a Specific Promoter for Human Rod and Cone ON-Bipolar Cells. Molecular Therapy - Methods & Clinical Development, 17, pp. 505-519. Cell Press 10.1016/j.omtm.2020.03.003

Preview

Text Hulliger2020Empowering.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND). Download (3MB) | Preview

Optogenetic gene therapy holds promise to restore high-quality vision in blind patients and recently reached clinical trials. Although the ON-bipolar cells, the first retinal interneurons, make the most attractive targets for optogenetic vision restoration, they have remained inaccessible to human gene therapy due to the lack of a robust cell-specific promoter. We describe the design and functional evaluation of 770En_454P(hGRM6), a human GRM6 gene-derived, short promoter that drives strong and highly specific expression in both the rod- and cone-type ON-bipolar cells of the human retina. Expression also in cone-type ON-bipolar cells is of importance, since the cone-dominated macula mediates high-acuity vision and is the primary target of gene therapies. 770En_454P(hGRM6)-driven middle-wave opsin expression in ON-bipolar cells achieved lasting restoration of high visual acuity in the rd1 mouse model of late retinal degeneration. The new promoter enables precise manipulation of the inner retinal network and paves the way for clinical application of gene therapies for high-resolution optogenetic vision restoration, raising hopes of significantly improving the life quality of people suffering from blindness.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

122 since deposited on 19 May 2020
27 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item