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Roska Botond, a Hungarian neurobiologist doing research in Switzerland, was honored in Hamburg on Monday with the Körber European Science Prize, one of the world’s largest scientific prizes with a cash prize of one million euros.
Every year, the Hamburg-based Körber Foundation awards a single European scientist from all disciplines. “Roska Botond’s research hopes to develop new treatments that can restore blind vision. “ – said Peter Tschentscher, Mayor of Hamburg, at the award ceremony on Monday. According to the foundation, the Hungarian scientist has brought about a revolutionary change in ophthalmology, one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of vision and retinal research, writes MTI.
The director of the Basel Institute of Clinical and Molecular Ophthalmology, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Basel and head of the neurobiology research group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Medical Research, told MTI in June: years to understand the mechanism of vision. As he explained, no one has dealt with this issue at the time, a lot of research is being done in this area today. His research team was the first to map how different cells of the visual system extract visual information from the environment.
One of the scientist’s main areas of research, gene therapy experiments to restore vision, he said at the time, developed a vision sensor that could transmit visual information to the central nervous system of patients by interfering with the function of cells. appropriate on the damaged retina. He also mentioned that some of the experiments had reached the clinical trial phase: 15 visually impaired people received the gene therapy vaccine they had developed. The experiments are being carried out in London, Paris and the United States. The results of the first five subjects are currently being evaluated and, at the end of the year, the degree of effectiveness of the therapy will be made public.
The Hungarian neurobiologist received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1997 and a Marie Curie Award of Excellence in 2006. In 2018, he received the prestigious Alden Spencer Medical Award from Columbia University for understanding the process of vision, followed by the Bressler Award for his therapy. vision restoration. In 2019, he was the first Hungarian scientist to win the Louis Jeantet Prize, also known as the Nobel Prize lobby, for discovering the basic processes of visual information processing and developing gene therapy to restore vision. In Hungary, in 2019, he also won the Semmelweis Budapest Prize and the Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen. Every year since 1985, the Körber Prize is awarded to a promising scientist who conducts promising research.
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