DW: How close do you think we are to finding a cure for blindness with optogenetics?
Peter Hegemann: I wouldn't say a cure, but we can at least partially substitute our visual impact in patients that are totally blind.
In that sense, how well would they be able to see after they had this treatment?
They will not recover their full visual potential as we have. But they will gain enough vision capability to orient themselves and run around outside, in the environment freely, as we do, but only at high light intensities.
So outside will be better than inside. Well, that is a fantastic development, if it came about. Now you yourself use light to control or alter nerve cells. Can you tell us more about your own field of work?
In my laboratory, we optimize the tools, which means light-activated enzymes and light-activated ion channels. We change the absorption spectra, which allows you to apply blue light, red light, green light and so on. We try to develop combined systems: light-activated enzymes and so on.
One of your projects includes or looks at Parkinson's disease? What exactly are you doing there?
In this sense, we collaborate with Karl Deisseroth from Stanford University. This group is interested in addressing motor neurons in the hippocampal center. That is important for Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's is treated in these days by current, and current has side-effects. It also activates cells of the surrounding. Optogenetics would be more specific and more sensitive and less harmful than current.
Some of your colleagues say the practical medical applications of optogenetics are somewhat overrated. How would you react to that?
They are probably not overrated by the scientists; they are overrated by the journalists, to make them more fancy. I think we have to be careful, and we should not promise more than we can do in the next years. We are enthusiastic, but we are far away from promising anything.
So it's more about understanding how the brain works, rather than...
Right. First of all, optogenetics is an analytical tool to understand the neuronal networks.
And does it raise any medical ethical issues?
This is a serious issue. We - 'we' meaning the leading scientists all over the world will meet at the Free University, and we have a Dahlem Conference to exactly discuss this issue this year.
(Interview: Anne O'Donnell:)