The Institute of Higher Nervous Activity will participate in "Vision recovery by optogenetics solutions" (Vosstanovlienije Zrenija Optogeneticheskimi Reshenijami, VZOR) mega-grant project.
The Federal authorities allocated 340 mln. roubles from the budget. The project is directed to the development of methods of full image recovery by the method of optogenetic prothesis. Such a method is suitable for people which retina photoreceptors are damaged but nerve cells are intact.
"The principal novelty of the solution is own human nerve cells act as a prothesis. Such cells will be empowered by posibility of synthetizing a new light-sensitive protein. The protein will be delivered to the human eye by the truncated virus which ability to reproduce is absent." - said the Pavel M. Balaban, a Corr. Member of RAS and the project director.
The detailed information about the project is available in Russian here.