A San Diego pharmacologist has earned a 2019 Breakthrough Prize, one of the highest honors for science and medical researchers, for co-developing the first therapy for children with spinal muscular atrophy, the leading genetic cause of infant death, it was announced Wednesday.
C. Frank Bennett, a researcher at the Carlsbad-based Ionis Pharmaceutical and New York-based biochemist Adrian R. Krainer will share the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing a commercially available drug, Nusinersen, that uses what is essentially gene therapy to mitigate the particular gene that causes SMA, a rare disease which often claims the lives of its victims before their second birthday.
Bennett began collaborating researching SMA with Krainer in 2004, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Nusinersen, which is marketed by Biogen as Spinraza, in 2016.
The two, who will share the $3 million prize that comes with the award, will be honored in the life sciences category with three other winners.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its sponsors, who include Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, announced a total of $22 million in awards to nine researchers for achievements in three award categories: life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.
The foundation will formally honor the Breakthrough Prize winners, along with six recipients of New Horizon Prizes worth $100,000 each for early- career achievements in physics and math, at the seventh annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony on Nov. 4 at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Actor Pierce Brosnan will host the so-called “Oscars of Science” ceremony, which will be broadcast live on Nat Geo, YouTube and Facebook Live.
–City News Service