Progress and challenge of gene therapy on inherited retinal diseases

The rapid development of genetic diagnosis-related technologies has paved a wide road for gene therapy. Different gene therapy clinical trials for retinal disorders, including gene-replacement therapy, anti-neovascular gene therapy and opotogenetic gene therapy, have been developed and achieved fruitful results, which have gradually confirmed the efficacy and safety of adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene therapy for recessive retinal diseases. In recent years, novel gene editing technologies also shows great potential to treat dominant retinal disease, or recessive retinal disease when the therapeutic gene fragments are too long to fit into the AAV vectors. These results make it possible for most of the patients with inherited retinal diseases to be treated by the safe and effective AAV-mediated gene therapy, which will also benefit Chinese patients soon. Key words: Retinal diseases/genetics; Gene therapy; Editorial