University And Biotech Firm Team Up On Colorblindness Therapy

A simulation from the Neitz lab of what colorblindness looks like, with normal color vision on the left and red-green colorblindness on the right. Courtesy of Neitz Laboratory hide caption

A simulation from the Neitz lab of what colorblindness looks like, with normal color vision on the left and red-green colorblindness on the right.

More than 10 million Americans have trouble distinguishing red from green or blue from yellow, and there's no treatment for colorblindness.

A biotech company and two scientists hope to change that.

On Wednesday, Avalanche Biotechnologies in Menlo Park and the University of Washington in Seattle announced a licensing agreement to develop the first treatment for colorblindness. 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.

Dalton the squirrel monkey during the color vision test. Courtesy of Neitz Laboratory hide caption

Dalton the squirrel monkey during the color vision test.

The agreement has its roots in a scientific breakthrough that occurred six years ago. That's when two vision researchers at the University of Washington used gene therapy to cure a common form of colorblindness in squirrel monkeys.

"This opened the possibility of ultimately getting this to cure colorblindness in humans," says Jay Neitz, who runs the Color Vision Lab at UW along with his wife, Maureen Neitz.

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University And Biotech Firm Team Up On Colorblindness Therapy