The Breakthrough Prize Foundation honored gene therapy pioneers with the 2026 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences, spotlighting teams behind landmark advances that helped establish clinical gene therapy. One recognized effort, led by Jean Bennett, Albert Maguire, and Katherine High at the University of Pennsylvania, traces to a retinal blindness treatment currently in use in multiple countries. A second honored effort credited Swee Lay Thein of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute with identifying the genetic driver of fetal hemoglobin persistence in beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, in partnership with physician scientist Stuart Orkin at Harvard. The award underscores how the field’s early mechanistic breakthroughs and translation pathways have shaped today’s clinical momentum across multiple genetic disease areas.