“Our results set a new standard of what biological improvements are possible,” said Artur Cideciyan, the trial’s co-lead author.

In this study, one of the patients was followed for 15 months after the single injection.

The patient’s sight improved after one month, peaked in two months, and continued to hold on to the improvement even at 15 months following the single injection.

“Our results set a new standard of what biological improvements are possible,” said Artur Cideciyan, the trial’s co-lead author and a research professor of ophthalmology at Penn Medicine’s Scheie Eye Institute. .

For the trial’s authors, including co-lead author Samuel Jacobson, the long-ranging timeline of vision improvement following one injection gives them hope that RNA therapy will have similar impacts on other ciliopathies, or ocular genetic mutations with protein defections.