In a first, doctors injected the gene-editing tool CRISPR directly into cells in patients' eyes. The experiment helped these vision-impaired patients see shapes and colors again.
As the first patient to receive an experimental treatment that relied on the gene-editing technique CRISPR continues to do well 17 months later, more patients seem to be benefiting, too.
Doctors used CRISPR to edit genes of cells inside a patient's eye, hoping to restore vision to a person blinded by a rare genetic disorder. A similar strategy might work for some brain diseases.