Our Cure

Vectors of AAV will carry the inserted genes into macula where the photoreceptors cells are. With the genes incorporated in the cone cells, they can produce opsins necessary for color vision.

Upon delving into the issue of color blindness, we considered multiple solutions for a cure, which all seemed probable, but at the same time, were inconvenient and possibly impractical. The first concept we devised was an improvement on a current treatments for color blindness: corrective contact lenses and tinted glasses. Neither the glasses nor the contact lenses actually cure color blindness, only improving eyesight by enhancing the colors and outlines of the objects seen to better distinguish each item or color. We thought that we can design lenses that will completely cure color deficiency, perhaps by altering the messages of wavelengths perceived by the brain. Later we considered the difficulty in achieving this objective as materials necessary to create such lenses will not be common, affordable materials found outside the laboratory. We also predicted great inconvenience in putting on these lenses. We decided to move on to another idea.

      The second design that we generated was the creation of a biogenetic eye. The eyes of the patients would be replaced with prosthetic eyes made out of organic nanobits. However, this eye must include a coding that would translate signals received by the photoreceptors in the retina into images produced by the brain, and this seemed too complicated and extremely challenging with today’s current technology, and not to mention highly costly. A person diagnosed with color vision deficiency would be unlikely to spend so much to improve their eyesight, nor would they be likely to endure surgery to replace their eyes with unnatural ones.

      Our third proposal was to make alterations directly to the brain, rather than the eye. Perceptions of color are received in the brain by stimuli produced when wavelengths of light react with the rods and cone photoreceptors in the eye. This idea might be feasible, but only if we can change the function of the eye so that only rods are necessary to provide these signals for the retinal ganglion cells, which would send the information to the brain, which would  interpret this information as shades of color rather than hues of gray.