Dr. Jean Bennett and Dr. Albert Maguire are this year's recipients of the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine for their work in the field of retinal gene therapies, which has led to "a first fully approved breakthrough treatment for blindness," per a press release from the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
The pair's "striking results in a dog model of Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare genetic cause of blindness, provided support for human clinical trials, which reversed blindness in children and resulted in FDA approval of gene therapy to the eye," per the release.
Their work has "impacted the standard of care for patients living with congenital blindness and offered new hope where none existed," says the president of the Harrington Discovery Institute.
The pair's work began in the 1980s with the discovery of a new class of genes that could reverse the blindness-causing mutation in Leber's congenital amaurosis, which led to the development of a gene therapy that was ultimately approved by the FDA for treating blindness in children.
Bennett and Maguire are now working on a second inherited disease, Choroideremia, which leads to complete blindness in middle age.
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