Innovative Strategies for Treating Retinal Diseases

Objective: The aim of this comprehensive paper is to acquaint the readers with innovative approaches in the treatment of retinal diseases, which could in the coming years to get into clinical practice. Retinal prostheses, retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) transplantation, gene therapy and optogenetics will be described in this paper.
Methodology: Describing the basic characteristics and mechanisms of different types of therapy and subsequently literary minireview clarifying the current state of knowledge in the area.
Results: Retinal prostheses, RPE transplantation, gene therapy and optogenetics offer yet unexplored possibilities and are considered as the future of treatment of retinal diseases where classical pharmacotherapy or surgical treatment are no longer sufficient. However, all these methods challenge not only in the innovative technical implementation itself, but also for the ethical, administrative and economic demands.
Conclusion: There will be certainly interesting development in the treatment of retinal diseases, but it is not possible to fully estimate which modality of treatment will be dominant in the future.