TL;DR
For people whose eyes have lost every light-sensing cell, gene therapy is starting to switch some of the lights back on. In one study, 7 of 10 legally blind people became more sensitive to light after a single eye injection, and a second, goggle-free therapy kept patients about three lines better on the eye chart four years later. That second therapy is now in front of the FDA. Neither restores reading or normal vision. But a one-time shot that works no matter which of more than 100 genes caused the blindness would be a new kind of medicine, and gene fixes for childhood blindness and for the most common form of age-related vision loss are moving up behind it.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "Opus Genetics doses the first patient in its LCA5 Phase 3 by 2027"; and every source.