PHILADELPHIA, October 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball.

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His treatment represents the next step toward medical science's goal of using gene therapy to cure disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, used gene therapy to safely improve vision in five children and seven adults with a Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA). The greatest improvements occurred in the children, all of whom are now able to navigate a low-light obstacle course-one result that the researchers call spectacular.

This result is an exciting one for the entire field of gene therapy, said Katherine A. High, M.D., co-first author of the study and the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics, the facility that sponsored the clinical trial at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. High, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, has been a pioneer in translational and clinical studies of gene therapy for genetic disease. This study reports dramatic results in restoring vision to patients who previously had no options for treatment, said High. These findings may expedite development of gene therapy for more common retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration.

Although the patients did not attain normal eyesight, half of them (six of 12) improved enough that they may no longer be classified as legally blind. The clinical benefits have persisted for nearly two years since the first subjects were treated with injections of therapeutic genes into their retinas, said senior author Jean Bennett, M.D., Ph.D., F.M. Kirby professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. For Bennett, the results build on nearly 20 years of gene studies on hereditary blindness, starting with pioneering work in mice and dogs. These remarkable results, she added, have laid a foundation for applying gene therapy not only to other forms of childhood-onset retinal disease, but also to more common retinal degenerations.

The study team reported their findings today in an online article in The Lancet.

Children who were treated with gene therapy are now able to walk and play just like any normally sighted child, said co-first author Albert M. Maguire, M.D., an associate professor of Ophthalmology at Penn and a physician at Children's Hospital. They can also carry out classroom activities without visual aids.

Maguire and Bennett have been researching inherited retinal degenerations for nearly 20 years. Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), the target of this current study, is a group of inherited blinding diseases that damages light receptors in the retina. It usually begins stealing sight in early childhood and causes total blindness during a patient's twenties or thirties. Currently, there is no treatment for LCA.

For children and adults in the study, functional improvements in vision followed single injections of genes that produced proteins to make light receptors work in their retinas. Walking along a dimly lit, simulated street route, the children were able to negotiate barriers they bumped into before the surgery. Another child, who since birth, could only see light and shadows, stared into his father's face and said he could see the color of his eyes. Later they played soccer together.

The 12 subjects ranged in age from 8 to 44 years old at the time of treatment. Four of the children, aged 8 to 11, are the world's youngest individuals to receive gene therapy for a non-lethal disease (A fifth subject was 17 years old). On the other end of the age scale, the 35-year-old man and 44-year-old woman are the oldest patients to ever receive gene therapy for retinal degeneration.

For the current human trial, the research team used a vector, a genetically engineered adeno-associated virus, to carry a normal version of the gene, called RPE65, that is mutated in one form of LCA, called LCA2, that accounts for 8 to 16 percent of all LCA cases. Jeannette Bennicelli, Ph.D., in Bennett's laboratory, cloned the gene. The clinical vector production facility at Children's Hospital's Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics (CCMT), directed by Fraser Wright, Ph.D., manufactured the vector.

The clinical trial brought together subjects and scientists from two continents. Five patients enrolled in the study were identified at the Department of Ophthalmology at the Second University of Naples, an institution with a long-standing program in researching inherited retinal diseases, under the supervision of Francesca Simonelli, M.D. Two children from Belgium were recruited through the ophthalmic genetics clinics at the Department of Ophthalmology at the Ghent University Hospital, under the supervision of Bart Leroy, M.D., Ph.D. Jennifer Wellman, of the CCMT, directed all local and federal regulatory interactions for the study.

Another co-author, Edwin Stone, M.D., Ph.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and director of the Carver Center, a genetic testing laboratory at the University of Iowa, identified and verified several of the disease-causing mutations in the study subjects.

In April 2008, the current study team published encouraging preliminary results in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding three young adults, the first to receive gene therapy in this current clinical trial. Those subjects showed improvements in their visual function in both objective vision tests and subjective reports by the patients themselves. Patients who could only detect hand movements gained the ability to read lines on an eye chart.

After the first group of three young adults was treated safely, the study team extended gene therapy to five children from the United States, Italy and Belgium, in addition to four other adults. Because animal studies conducted by Bennett and colleagues had shown that visual improvement was age-dependent, the researchers tested the hypothesis that younger human subjects would receive greater benefits from the treatment. LCA is a progressive disease, so if a treatment was possible, it was plausible to intervene before damage to the retina was severe, said Bennett.

In all, 12 patients received the gene therapy via a surgical procedure performed by Maguire starting in October 2007 at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. For each subject, Maguire injected the therapeutic genes into the eye with poorer function. There were three patient cohorts, receiving low, middle and high doses. No serious adverse events occurred in any of the test subjects.

Starting two weeks after the injections, all 12 subjects reported improved vision in dimly lit environments in the injected eye. An objective measurement, which measures how the eye's pupil constricts, showed that all the subjects were able to detect significantly more light after treatment and also showed greater light sensitivity in each patient's treated eye compared to the untreated eye. In addition, before treatment, nine patients had nystagmus, an involuntary movement of the eyes that is common in LCA. After treatment, seven of them had significant improvements in nystagmus.

Some of the most dramatic results, captured on video by the researchers, are apparent as subjects traverse a standardized obstacle course. Before the treatment, the patients had great difficulty avoiding barriers, especially in dim light. After treatment, the children navigated the course more quickly, with fewer errors than before, even at the lowest light levels. Not all the adults performed better on the mobility course, and for those who did, the improvements were more modest compared to the children's.

In follow-up studies, we will continue to monitor these patients to determine whether this treatment stops the progression of this retinal degeneration, said Maguire. In the future, we hope to investigate whether other retinal disease will be amenable to this gene therapy approach.

The clinical trial was sponsored and primarily funded by the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Research support was received from the Foundation Fighting Blindness sponsored CHOP-PENN Pediatric Center for Retinal Degenerations, Research to Prevent Blindness, the Macula Vision Foundation, the Paul and Evanina Mackall Foundation Trust at the Scheie Eye Institute, and the F.M. Kirby Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the Italian Telethon Foundation, the Regione Campania Convenzione, the Foundation for Retinal Research, the Associazione Italiana Amaurosi Congenita di Leber, the Fund for Scientific Research and the Fund for Research in Ophthalmology. Drs. High and Stone are Investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also provided support. Other grant support came from the National Center for Research Resources.

About The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country, ranking third in National Institutes of Health funding. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 430-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.

The Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at Children's Hospital was established in 2005, with a mission of fostering a multidisciplinary approach to the development of new cell and gene therapies for the treatment of serious and debilitating childhood disorders. The Center conducts cutting edge research in gene transfer, gene regulation, gene discovery, stem cell biology, experimental models of disease, and correction of genetic disease. Consistent with Children's Hospital's research mission to transform scientific insights into improved medical therapies, the Center has the capacity to support rapid translation of promising results from the laboratory to the clinic, through facilities for manufacturing clinical-grade gene therapy vectors for clinical studies, and through specialized regulatory support for the design and implementation of clinical trials of complex, novel classes of therapeutics.

About PENN Medicine

PENN Medicine is a US$3.6 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Penn's School of Medicine is currently ranked #3 in the nation in U.S.News World Report's survey of top research-oriented medical schools; and, according to the National Institutes of Health, received over US$366 million in NIH grants (excluding contracts) in the 2008 fiscal year. Supporting 1,700 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) includes its flagship hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, rated one of the nation's top ten Honor Roll hospitals by U.S.News World Report; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for cardiovascular care by Thomson Reuters. In addition UPHS includes a primary-care provider network; a faculty practice plan; home care, hospice, and nursing home; three multispecialty satellite facilities; as well as the Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse campus, which offers comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation facilities and outpatient services in multiple specialties.

The Department of Ophthalmology at Penn manages care for adults at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, at Scheie Eye Institute, and also for children at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Department also houses the F.M. Kirby Center for Molecular Ophthalmology, founded in 1994. The Center was the first molecular biology center devoted to developing gene therapy for hereditary causes of vision loss. The Center serves as home to the laboratories of seven investigators who conduct research on the cellular and molecular biology of eye disease and visual function.

Press Contact: Joey McCool Ryan The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia +1-267-426-6070 +1-267-258-6735 (cell) McCool@email.chop.edu Karen Kreeger University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine +1-215-662-2560 +1-215-459-0544 (cell) Karen.kreeger@uphs.upenn.edu

SOURCE: The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

CONTACT: Joey McCool Ryan of The Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia,+1-267-426-6070, +1-267-258-6735 (cell), McCool@email.chop.edu; or KarenKreeger of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, +1-215-662-2560,+1-215-459-0544 (cell), Karen.kreeger@uphs.upenn.edu