Hauswirth Receives Llura Liggett Gund Award

Midwest Lens reports that "the Foundation Fighting Blindness...recognizes William W. Hauswirth, Ph.D., of the University of Florida College of Medicine, with its Llura Liggett Gund Award. The Foundation’s highest research honor, this award has only been bestowed upon eight individuals in 42 years, who, throughout their long, extraordinarily productive careers, have moved the field of retinal disease research forward in a seminal way....Dr. Hauswirth is an innovator of delivery systems for sight-saving gene therapies. Using non-harmful adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) to transport healthy DNA into retinal cells at the back of the eye, he was part of the research group that first showed gene therapy could restore vision in animal models, including Briard dogs. His team’s approach was then used in human clinical trials where children and young adults virtually blind from Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) have had significant vision restored." Read more.