Breakthrough Prize 2026: Six $3M Awards Honor Gene Therapy, Sickle Cell and ALS Science

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation revealed the 2026 laureates on April 18 in Los Angeles, handing out six $3 million prizes in what is often called "the Oscars of Science." The winners share discoveries that are already changing medicine and physics.

Jean Bennett, Katherine High and Albert Maguire received a Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize for inventing the first FDA-approved gene therapy, which restores vision in patients born with an inherited form of blindness caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene. Stuart Orkin and Swee Lay Thein won for uncovering the genetic switch that controls fetal hemoglobin, a discovery that opened the door to the first approved gene therapy for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia.

Rosa Rademakers and Bryan Traynor were honored for identifying the C9orf72 gene mutation as the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia, work that is guiding a new generation of therapies. In mathematics, Frank Merle received the prize for foundational contributions to the analysis of partial differential equations. The Muon g-2 collaborations at CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab shared the Fundamental Physics Prize, while theoretical physicist David J. Gross received a Special Breakthrough Prize for decades of work on the strong nuclear force.

Founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, the prize celebrates scientists whose discoveries transform human understanding and human health. The 2026 ceremony also awarded early-career prizes to young mathematicians and physicists, ensuring that the pipeline of breakthrough research continues for the next generation.