{"id":236702,"date":"2026-05-07T10:02:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T15:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/gene-therapy-pioneers-win-2026-breakthrough-prize"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:02:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T15:02:56","slug":"gene-therapy-pioneers-win-2026-breakthrough-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/gene-therapy-pioneers-win-2026-breakthrough-prize","title":{"rendered":"Gene Therapy Pioneers Win 2026 Breakthrough Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/gene-therapy-pioneers-win-2026-breakthrough-prize.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Genetic diseases impact almost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegenehome.com\/basics-of-genetics\/disease-examples\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">70\u201380 million people<\/a> worldwide. Oftentimes, there are limited treatments that doctors can provide, leaving patients with few interventions to manage symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, though, gene therapy has completely shifted the potential to care for many diseases. Advances in knowledge of responsible genes and nucleic acid technology have revolutionized the ability to specifically edit regions of the genome to correct mutations.<\/p>\n<p>Today (April 18), the <a href=\"https:\/\/breakthroughprize.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Breakthrough Prize Foundation<\/a> awarded the Life Sciences prize to two teams of five researchers who pioneered gene therapies for two different types of genetic diseases. Physician scientist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.upenn.edu\/apps\/faculty\/index.php\/g275\/p11214\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jean Bennett<\/a>, retinal surgeon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chop.edu\/doctors\/maguire-albert-m\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Albert Maguire<\/a>, and physician scientist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.upenn.edu\/apps\/faculty\/index.php\/g275\/p12112\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Katherine High<\/a> from the University of Pennsylvania developed a treatment to cure retinal blindness that is currently in use in the US, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland. Separately, clinical investigator <a href=\"https:\/\/irp.nih.gov\/pi\/swee-lay-thein\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Swee Lay Thein<\/a>, now at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, tracked down the gene responsible for continued production of fetal hemoglobin in beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease and, with the help of physician scientist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hsci.harvard.edu\/people\/stuart-orkin-md\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stuart Orkin<\/a> at Harvard University, brought this finding from the bench to the bedside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Genetic diseases impact almost 70\u201380 million people worldwide. Oftentimes, there are limited treatments that doctors can provide, leaving patients with few interventions to manage symptoms. Recently, though, gene therapy has completely shifted the potential to care for many diseases. Advances in knowledge of responsible genes and nucleic acid technology have revolutionized the ability to specifically [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}