(John Moore/Getty Images)
A group of 13 scientists from around the world have been awarded $3 million in gold for their contributions to end blindness, the National Geographic reported Thursday.
The Sanford and Sue Greenberg Prize to End Blindness funds cutting-edge vision therapies as well as low-cost eye care. The purpose behind the prize “is to create a worldwide research community that will contribute its collective skills and resources in concert, step by step, phase by phase, to end blindness forever as a scourge to humanity,” according to the Greenberg Award website.
The gold will be distributed among the 13 winners in two categories: Outstanding Achievement Awards and Visionary Awards.
A virtual event honoring the awardees will be streamed Dec. 14 at 7:00 p.m. PST. Art Garfunkel, Margaret Atwood, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Diane Schuur among other leaders are expected to appear at the streaming ceremony. There will also be a tribute to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who will be reading from Sanford Greenberg's memoir.
Co-organizer Sanford Greenberg is chairman of the board of governors at Johns Hopkins University’s Wilmer Eye Institute. He called the awardees’ work “extraordinary” and believes the world is close to curing blindness. Greenberg lost his eyesight in 1961, when he was a 20-year-old in college and suddenly went blind due to glaucoma — one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide.
More than two billion individuals worldwide have vision impairments caused by eye disease, genetic abnormalities and aging. Half of these cases can be treated or prevented with intervention, National Geographic reported.
In Hyderabad, India, the chair and founder of the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Gallipalli Rao, received an Outstanding Achievement Award for expanding eye care access to more than 30 million people. India has one of the highest rates of blindness worldwide with about 4.8 million individuals reportedly blind.
“I grew up in a rural village and saw that blindness and vision impairment was a problem,” Rao said. “We thought we should get into the rural areas and develop a model of high-quality, comprehensive care.”
Masayo Takahashi at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan received one of the seven Visionary Awards for her team's stem cell breakthrough research. In 2014, Takahashi and her colleagues cured a 70-year-old patient with macular degeneration by inducing pluripotent stem cells derived from her skin tissue.
The team turned the cells into a sheet of tiny retinal pigment epithelium cells, which regulate the photoreceptors needed for vision. After implanting these cells into the patient’s eye, they were able to successfully stop the disease.
“In their latest clinical trials, which involve using a similar stem cell technique to replace parts of the retina and some photoreceptors, some patients are able to perceive light again or see the shapes of objects,” National Geographic reported.
The full list of winners is available on National Geographic.