Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital ophthalmology clinic in Montreal have performed groundbreaking gene therapy on an 11-year-old boy.The procedure was to reverse a degenerative, genetic eye disease that could have caused him to go blind.
It’s the first operation of its kind in Quebec, and the first publicly funded one in Canada.The surgeons performed the surgery on William Khayrallah’s eyes two weeks apart, with the first surgery on his right eye occurring on May 18.
The doctors surgically administered Luxturna, a gene therapy drug developed in the United States. The second surgery was conducted on May 29.“To convert an untreatable disease into a treatable disease, for a physician in their lifetime in their career, it’s very rare,” said Dr.
Flavio Rezende, an ophthalmologist and retinologist surgeon.“It’s a very special opportunity we have to impact medicine into the future, and the future is the present.