The Dean McGee Eye Institute, based in Oklahoma City, partnered with OU Health to become one of the 17 centers in the nation to provide a new treatment to reverse vision loss in patients, according to an Aug. 25 report from The Oklahoma City Sentinel.
Luxturna is a gene therapy that uses a harmless virus to replace a mutated RPE-65 gene with a normal copy in the retinal cells. The normal copy of the gene will allow for the production of necessary proteins and gradually preserve and improve visual function.
The new treatment will be used for patients with Leber congenital amaurosis, which is blindness caused by mutations that deteriorate the retinal cells and cause a progressive loss of vision. LCA is the leading cause of inherited blindness in children, and mutations in both copies of the RPE-65 gene can make children start to lose their vision at 5 years old.
Dean McGee partnered with OU Health Pharmacy and the OU Outpatient Surgery Center to offer the new treatment, reducing the distance LCA patients previously had to travel to receive this treatment.