More than 10 million Americans have trouble distinguishing red from green or blue from yellow, and there’s no treatment for color blindness.
A biotech company and two scientists hope to change that.
Avalanche Biotechnologies in Menlo Park and the University of Washington in Seattle announced a licensing agreement to develop the first treatment for color blindness. The deal brings together a gene therapy technique developed by Avalanche with the expertise of vision researchers at the University of Washington.
“Our goal is to be treating colorblindness in clinical trials in patients in the next one to two years,” says Thomas Chalberg, the founder and CEO of Avalanche.
Colorblindness is usually a genetic disorder. About 8 percent of men inherit a mutation on the X chromosome that makes it hard for them to distinguish between red and green. The condition affects only about 0.5 percent of women, who have two X chromosomes.
For some people, color blindness means they are unable to pursue careers as pilots or fire fighters or even electricians, whose work involves a lot of color-coded wires.
Colorblindness can also make it hard to do things like drive after dark, says Maureen Neitz. That became a big problem for her brother, who is colorblind, after his community switched from mercury street lamps, which give off bluish light, to sodium street lamps, which produce orange light.
Read full, original article: University And Biotech Firm Team Up On Colorblindness
