Gene Therapy for Retinal Diseases

Gene therapy has a growing research potential particularly in the field of ophthalmic and retinal diseases owing to three main characteristics of the eye; accessibility in terms of injections and surgical interventions, its immune-privileged status facilitating the accommodation to the antigenicity of a viral vector, and tight blood-ocular barriers which save other organs from unwanted contamination. Gene therapy has tremendous potential for different ocular diseases. In fact, the perspective of gene therapy in the field of eye research does not confine to exclusive monogenic ophthalmic problems and it has the potential to include gene based pharmacotherapies for non-monogenic problems such as age related macular disease and diabetic retinopathy. The present article has focused on how gene transfer into the eye has been developed and used to treat retinal disorders with no available therapy at present.