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Luigi Naldini, director of the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-Tiget) in Milan and full professor of Histology and Gene and Cell Therapy at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, received the Phacilitate Lifetime Achievement Award Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 in recognition of his role as a pioneer in the field of gene therapy and the impact of his research in the treatment of serious diseases, genetic but not only. In particular, Naldini is recognized as the “father” of lentiviral vectors, therapeutic tools now widely used in clinics and derived from one of the most feared human viruses, HIV.
The Phacilitate Advanced Therapies Award recognizes innovations in the field of advanced therapies and the entries were judged by a jury of international experts representing research institutions, universities and the biotechnology industry in a two-stage judging process. It was established in 2023 with the award to Carl June for the development of Car-T cell therapy. The 2024 award ceremony took place on January 18 in Miami, Florida, as part of the Advanced Therapies Week, with the participation of a large scientific community.
«Naldini perfectly embodies the concept of “innovator”. His unwavering dedication to developing therapies that benefit patients has driven him and his team to not be discouraged by early failures and to develop better and increasingly safer therapies. Without his dedication and perseverance, gene therapy would not be where it is today, able to change patients’ lives thanks to drugs now approved for genetic diseases such as Ada-Scid and metachromatic leukodystrophy, not to mention the numerous others still in the clinical development phase” declares Sven Kili, president of the jury of the Phacilitate prize.
«I am grateful to my teachers and to the fantastic colleagues and excellent students who accompanied me on this extraordinary journey from the counter to the sickbed that lasted almost thirty years, sharing the inspiration, the difficulties and frustrations and, finally, the successes. I also thank the members of the jury, who wanted to award me this lifetime achievement award. I will continue to work with renewed energy and enthusiasm in the search for solutions based on gene and cell therapy for the many patients who need innovative therapies to deal with diseases hitherto considered fatal” commented Luigi Naldini on the occasion of the award ceremony.
After graduating in Medicine and Surgery and a doctorate in Cytological and Morphogenetic Sciences in Turin in the mid-1990s, Luigi Naldini moved to the Salk Institute in La Jolla (USA), where working with Inder Verma and Didier Trono he demonstrated the possibility to transfer therapeutic genes by exploiting the infectious characteristics of the HIV virus and built the prototype of the lentiviral vectors currently in use throughout the world. After an experience in the biotech world of the San Francisco Bay Area, in which he further perfected lentiviral vectors for safe clinical use, he returned to Italian academia, first in Turin and then in Milan.