As being declared method of the year 2010 by nature but requirement of expression of foreign protein and a high grade of invasion, I am really curious (not criticizing) over the potential of Optogenetics in Human subjects. Workers at Salk institute have come up with expansion of codons, but problem remains more or less same. I want to know is there a scope of modification or we are going to have pure human lines with recombinant brain (ethical challenge) or this method will remain limited to murine and other lines?
In my eyes one of the major current obstacles for routine clinical application of optogenetics is safe viral gene delivery to brain tisssue. Invasive stereotactic injections have many drawbacks (poor spatial reach, infections, accuracy). Viral delivery via the circulatory system would overcome this problem. However, normally this is effectively blocked by the blood brain barrier. There are current efforts to develop tools to bridge the BBB by temporally induced defects (in animal models). Although it is an open issue, if this will be applicable in patients, it is an interesting line of research worth following....
Thanks Max but, its not only about infecting with virus for gene delivery, its about uniformly infecting, producing pure lines i think that is the major challenge...
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