- A father with the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa was able to see his newborn son for the first time thanks to genetic therapy that restored his partial sight
- A “healthy copy” of the mutated gene that caused his blindness was injected into Tyler Wilfong’s eye
- He started losing his sight at age 23 and now says it’s a “blessing” to see his son
A new father with a degenerative eye disease was able to see his newborn son for the first time thanks to genetic therapy that helped restore partial sight in one eye.
Tyler Wilfong of Lincolnton, North Carolina, said it was “amazing” to see his newborn son.
Wilfong was born with the progressive eye disease retinitis pigmentosa (or RP), which, according to the National Eye Institute, causes “cells in the retina [to] they slowly break down over time, causing vision loss.”
“It’s progressing to blindness,” Wilfong told CBS 17, adding that he lost his driver’s license at age 23 when “my peripheral vision got too bad.”
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“I knew it was inevitable,” he said, adding that he had to rely on his wife to walk in public spaces. “I was losing a lot of independence.”
But then Wilfong learned that Duke Eye Center in Durham, North Carolina, was offering genetic therapy that could potentially restore some of his sight.
“There is a gene that is important for the proper functioning of the retina, and a mutation in that gene makes it non-functional,” Oleg Alekseev, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Duke, explained to the outlet. “So what we’re trying to do is get a healthy copy of that gene into the eye by injection.”
While using a virus as a gene carrier, Dr. Lejla Vajzovic, associate professor of ophthalmology at Duke, explained to CBS 17, “This virus was specifically developed to infect cells in the back of the eye to really serve as a vehicle to deliver a new gene, a good gene .”
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This spring he underwent therapy on one eye – and within days he saw something incredible.
“I could actually see my fingers in front of my face, which I never could,” Wilfong said.
But the best part was seeing his newborn son’s face – and now, he tells the paper, he can take a more active role in caring for him.
“It’s been a blessing,” said Wilfong, who plans to undergo the procedure on his other eye.
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“It is made of a world of diversity,” he marveled. “Just simple tasks you don’t even think about, like changing your clothes.”
Although the procedure was successful for Wilfong, Duke Eye Center researchers noted that it may not work for everyone.
“This only applies to those patients where this particular gene is affected,” Alekseev told CBS 17. “This gene represents less than one percent of all retinitis pigmentosa genes, so for the other 100,000 or so Americans living with RP , they are still waiting for their treatments, so we really have work to do to find those treatments.”
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Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education