Steroid hormones regulate many crucial physiological processes and any alteration in their production or activity can have major pathophysiological implications that can significantly affect quality of life. Whilst hormone replacement therapy can be helpful, its long-term effects remain unclear and require continuous delivery for months/years thus presenting a significant financial burden for healthcare providers. There is a recognized need to develop safer and more effective therapies to support lifelong health, using new technologies. Current developments in gene/cell-based therapies lack regulation and switch on/off accuracy, which remains a critical issue for clinical applications.
Initially developed in neuroscience to control neural activity, optogenetics has provided a new tool-set permitting an unmatched and precise spatiotemporal manipulation of signalling and cellular processes by light. This discovery thus enables technologies where light at specific wavelengths controls gene transcription. This rapidly developing field offers new prospects for the development of precise and regulated biomedical technologies that could be applied to the development of therapies that support healthy, endogenous androgen production.