UW scientists, biotech firm may have cure for colorblindness

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/uw-scientists-biotech-firm-may-have-cure-for-colorblindness/

by mdturnerphys • 11 years ago

125 46 11 years ago

peatmoss• 11 years ago

I wonder if this could be extended. The human visual system has some pretty major limitations in terms of sensitivity to different parts of the color spectrum. We know there are some rare women who have a mutation causing them to have much greater sensitivity to different portions of the spectrum that normally-sighted people perceive as blue. We call these women tetrachromats.

I, for one, am giddy at the idea of augmenting our senses to all be super-sighted tetrachromats. The whole notion of literally expanding the way we see the world has always been exciting beyond words. Maybe it's a result of having grown up with Geordi on Star Trek TNG...

dEnigma• 11 years ago

The question is whether we would actually profit from having more color pigments or if the additional information would just get lost at the level of optic nerves or in the brain, especially if you treat grown-ups.

neuronic4• 11 years ago

Have there been observations whether such augmentation could actually have detrimental effects?

The rest of my comment is just speculative inquiry.

I imagine that neuroplasticity could have individuals quickly adapting to new sensory information input. I wouldn't be completely surprised since new born humans need ~6-8 months to fully develop sight to a level that is considered 'normal'. But neuroplasticity is far more potent at that age than later [1].

Considering a decline in potency with age, what if neuroplasticity cannot account for the required adaptation in the adult brain's visual portion?

For one, the information could just get lost and be filtered out like you suggested. But couldn't it also be misinterpreted with the effect of visual disturbances etc.?

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21489387

agumonkey• 11 years ago

It would be extremely interesting to see how the brain would deal with such new information. My bet it that we would get new color-abstraction after a while, same as someone hearing polyphony after years of listening to harmony.

lambdaelite• 11 years ago

The risk/benefit of genetic engineering to enhance the spectral resolution of the eye wouldn't seem to be justified for the case of elective "vanity" procedures.

Also, at least by some sources I found, the identified tetrachromats have an additional cone with sensitivity between red and green, not in blue. Are you conflating tetrachromacy from additional comes with tetrachromacy arising from aphakia (loss of the UV-absorbing lens)?

jdnier• 11 years ago

I wonder how overwhelming it might be to suddenly see vivid reds and greens for the first time, especially for an adult, and not be able to turn it off.

begriffs• 11 years ago

Reading things like this make me reflect that more people should go into medicine. Medical advances are way more profound than new apps or web pages.

What are some good ways for a programmer to help the field? Maybe learning data science would allow me to help researchers while not knowing medicine myself.

afshin• 11 years ago

Bioinformatics might be a great halfway field.

denzil_correa• 11 years ago

Apparently, Steve Jobs felt that the next generation of cutting edge innovation would happen at the intersection of medicine and computer science.

yoda_sl2• 11 years ago

I think SJ because of his cancer started to look closer at that industry... I will not be surprised that Tim Cook because of Steve's passing started to look too in that area and the Watch is just the first small attempt by Apple to enter in that space. Tim and Steve were close friends, and Tim being too an avid cyclist, morning gym has no problem to have a few Engineers and R&D spent in that area.

ende2• 11 years ago

I would say that there is more of a shortage of data engineers to develop systems for facilitating data driven research in medicine. Medical biotechs are full of statisticians but research tends to be conducted in an ad hoc manner similar to in academia; disorganized data, poor coding standards, and manually driven processes. I feel that biotechs could really benefit from placing more emphasis on the -tech part.

I hope this isn't bad form posting outside of the monthly Who 's Hiring post, but my company is hiring in data engineering and DevOps. My team develops machine learning classifiers for cancer diagnostics. If you (or anyone reading) are interested I'd love to hesr from you: andrew@veracyte.com

aaron695• 11 years ago

Medical advances are way more profound than new apps or web pages.

One of the main reasons medical advances are are coming out hard and fast is because of "new apps or web pages."

I really don't get this anti-tech bent. These technologies and connections are what is transforming science everywhere.

Personally I think saying most web apps are a waste is like saying the space program is a waste. Personally I think these cutting edge technologies that seems to have no use are taking us amazing places.

ende2• 11 years ago

I agree with you whole heartedly. I would say that what medicine and biotechnology need their own apps and web technologies. Imagine if the next Uber or Instagram clone could instead be a patient facing app that integrates personal medical, genetic, fitness and dietary data with epidemiological trends to improve patient-doctor interactions for diagnoses and treatment? Or if biotech firms adopted the same open source ethos that many tech giants have embraced to contribute to a software development ecosystem that fuels innovation in the personalized medicine space?

Unfortunately bioinformatics-in-practice tends to be about 10 years behind the rest of the tech sector, and the only thing that the giants of biotech share with their tech sector counterparts is a love for IP. Still, an inflow of ambitious tech talent into the biotech and biomedical space could hack the industry open. Then again, there's also regulatory capture.

saraid2162• 11 years ago

Personally I think saying most web apps are a waste is like saying the space program is a waste.

While I think you have a point, I think this line is taking it a step too far.

If a successful space program completely failed to actually produce any side effect innovation, at the end of the day, we still go to space.

If a successful web app fails to produce side effects, you have a web app. Depending on the app, this might be a good thing, but it's hard to reliably say that a web app is comparable to going to space.

In my mind, the advantage of having so many smart people working on trivial applications is that the risk of failure is low. If they were developing these technologies in the medical world, the risk of failure is debilitation and death. Comparatively, a giant privacy intrusion or not being able to play League of Legends for a day is something I can, literally, live with.

Toenex• 11 years ago

I'm an engineer and have worked in medical imaging for my entire career (20+ years) writing software to transport, analyze and report on images from MR, CT and X-ray systems. I originally did a PhD in computer vision and jumped into medical imaging, first as a post doc at University but I've since worked in the pharma industry and in the last 10 years at medical imaging startups.

It's a fantastic intersection of software development, pattern recognition and algorithmic development in a space that gives your work definite meaning - spending your days looking at images of people with cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, lung disease etc can help focus you on the MVP that matters. You learn some radiology as you go too; I'm pretty good at KL scoring for OA on hip and knee radiographs for example.

Development in this space can also have it's frustrations, having to combine the latest innovations with the need to meet FDA and European regulatory requirements requires a little lateral thinking sometimes. Historically there was a reluctance in the field to adopt newer technologies but in the last 5-10 years that has really started to change with a lot of imaging moving into the cloud and the regulators waking up to fact that software isn't built like a syringe!

nirai• 11 years ago

hallelujah!

Lost_BiomedE• 11 years ago

Oddly, I found the headline underwhelming, even if 'may' was not there. I then found that fact overwhelming. Sure, when I think about curing colorblindness, I find a lot of good in it. I just think that on casual passing, I can be desensitized to the awesomeness that I read about every day. That is kind of exciting.

peterjmag• 11 years ago

I have a relatively mild form of colorblindness, and I can only make out three shapes in total on the testing cards in that photo—one circle in the top left corner of the card on the left, and a triangle and a circle on the left half of the card on the right. Can someone with normal color vision tell me what I'm supposed to see there?

Interestingly, my eyes keep trying to "resolve" another circle in the top right corner of the left card, but then when I actually focus on that part of the image, it disappears again. It's a pretty strange sensation, almost as if I were looking at a particularly tricky optical illusion.

http://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/fc...

dplarson• 11 years ago

The left card has a red circle (left corner) and a purple "x" (right corner), while the right card has a blue-green triangle (lower left corner) and a green-blue circle (lower right corner).

abandonliberty2• 11 years ago

To me both are made of mostly gray dots, with the exception of very easily visible symbols.

left: left corner O, salmon-ish color. Right corner X, a bit more purple.

Right card: blueish triangle, greenish circle.

chongli• 11 years ago

There is a circle in the top right corner of the left card. It's made up of the negative space between the dots.

The purple "x" is in the bottom right corner of the left card.

Oatseller• 11 years ago

Here's the photo with the shapes outlined.

http://i.imgur.com/XLdBRX0.jpg

srtjstjsj2• 11 years ago

FYI the rightmost figure is a deeper green than the 2nd-rightmost one; they aren't the same color. It's similar to the difference (but not as pronounced?) as the difference between the pink and purple on the left card (which i assume is part of the intention of the color choices for the cards)

srtjstjsj2• 11 years ago

The discs are arranged in pseudo-circular patterns, so at your periphery you see the approximated circle

abandonliberty2• 11 years ago

http://enchroma.com/technology/

Glasses that enable people with the common type of colorblindness to see color in bright areas.

Funny that the article doesn't mention them, I've heard very positive things.

yoda_sl2• 11 years ago

I am colorblind, and I have heard too about Enchroma... I do think that I have no issue trying out a pair of glasses and see the difference rather than betting on an injection in my eye... Don't take me wrong, I truly believe that some technical advances in medicine are welcome and needed, but colorblind is not a huge disability. I have learn to live with it, and it is not the end of the world. It is great if it works, but I think colorblindness isn't a first category Medical issue to be solved now.

PhasmaFelis2• 11 years ago

It's not a big issue for most of us, but if you want to work in a field where it's required, it's kind of a big deal. This includes some things that makes sense (graphic design, house painting) and some things that really should be accessible to the colorblind, if we hadn't carelessly set them up to not be (electrical engineering is heavily dependent on rainbow color codes).

It's not on the same order as, say, curing cancer, but finding a treatment for "8% of the population can't be electrical engineers or pilots for no good reason" seems like a pretty substantial thing.

saraid2162• 11 years ago

It is great if it works, but I think colorblindness isn't a first category Medical issue to be solved now.

That's not how innovation works. It's not a tech tree in which you choose what advance you discover next. You reflect on what you already know, intuit hypotheses from this, and then test those hypotheses to figure out how false they are.

Research isn't about solutions. It's about understanding.

TheLoneWolfling• 11 years ago

I wonder if this will suffer from the same sort of problems that other sense restorations suffer from - namely that the brain has no idea how to interpret the new inputs.

33% of the cones in your eye suddenly no longer being in synch isn't exactly a minor change.

I suppose some help is better than no help, however. Hopefully.

r-w• 11 years ago

I wonder whether this could also help improve peripheral color vision in human patients who are not colorblind…

pippy• 11 years ago

I have severe red-green color blindness and moderate blue-yellow. As a web developer it does make me extremely reliant on the color dropper tool, and I often miss subtle color differences on pages. It's made me much more careful about how I deal with images and color in general.

I have been looking for a solution to this, I was looking a company that made lenses for the color blind: http://enchroma.com/ but it seems mostly like snake oil to me.

I will be watching this technology very carefully. I suspect it will be about five years before we hit the market though.

neuronic4• 11 years ago

Just as a side note, I am very impressed that you still power through working in web development with some design component from what you've been saying.

I have a lot of respect for that.

rlneub• 11 years ago

My brother has benefitted. Please look at below

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/28739137/color-for-the-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTpCTDwjHZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgN-SAbb7Zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHKXb3tXj24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzKZHrMVdcU

marincounty• 11 years ago

I can only see the O in the top left.(I am partially color blind, but forgot what colors I can't see.)

I do know this--I worked as a Electrician, and at Telecom repair companies. Since, all the manufacturers of wire had slightly different hues due to production, I would alyways carry samples(pre labeled in my tool bag). As far as I know I never made a mistake, but always double checked if even slightly unsure. I think the color blindness made me more aware of errors. I never told anyone, and would make up something if I needed perfect eyes. My favorite, and sadly not a lie was, "I'm hung over Joe". What color is this?"

My grandfather who saw the world in black and white worked as a Printer, his entire life, in different departments. He was so color blind he memorized where individual traffic lights were placed (red on top in the U.S.). He only told family members of his condition. No one knew he was color blind in all his years as a Printer. This was through the 40-80's. He even got awards he used to put on his living room wall. Today--he probally wouldn't even get through the interview?

As to color blindness being a handicap--I'm not sure. I know in past wars, they used to use color blind guys when looking for troops trying hide using camafoge.(They could just spot the camafoge vs. the natural terrain?). There's also some speculation some great painters like Picasso, Van Gogh were color blind? I don't know if I would want to see the world differently. I do know I have always been more concerned in function over form in projects. I just don't care about the colors as much as some, but I do care about the lines/perception and workable layout in building anything(websites to houses).

tempestn• 11 years ago

At least until this treatment comes to market, there has been nothing you could do to change your colorblindness. Therefore it seems to me pretty natural that to have a positive outlook on life you would come to see it in as positive a light as possible. In fact, it's a common psychological mechanism to come to terms with elements of your life that cannot be changed, and to see yourself as better off for them.[1]

There are certainly positive aspects to colorblindness, just as there are to deafness, autism, and numerous other disabilities - even if it's simply that it makes you more compassionate toward people with disabilities, or even people in general. And as far as handicaps go, if it indeed is one, it's certainly less impactful than most. Is it a handicap though? I would say a handicap is something that prevents you from doing things that the majority of the population can do, in a way that impacts your quality of life. For me, if tulips looked like the right picture in the article[2], my quality of life would be impacted to some extent, even if the day to day events of life wouldn't much change. What if I've never experienced those colors though? Am I still missing out?

It may seem like an academic question; after all, if you don't feel like you're missing out and choose not to pursue treatment if/when it becomes available, certainly it doesn't hurt anyone else. But it can become an issue when you consider that the best time to administer such a treatment may be in infant-hood. I've certainly read about deaf people refusing to give cochlear implants to their deaf children because they don't believe that the child is missing out on anything of value, and/or that the advantages of deafness and the deaf community outweigh the disadvantages. Having normal hearing, I certainly would not have wanted my parents to make such a choice. (Although perhaps if I were deaf I would feel differently.)

Anyway, it's probably obvious which way my opinion goes, but mostly I think it's a discussion worth having.

[1] Dan Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness is a good read on this and related topics. [2] http://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/fl...

UW scientists, biotech firm may have cure for colorblindness

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