{"id":2684,"date":"2026-04-19T07:08:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T07:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=2684"},"modified":"2026-04-20T13:23:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:23:40","slug":"d41586-026-01014-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=2684","title":{"rendered":"Magnetic muon measurements and gene-therapy advances win US$3 million Breakthrough prizes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Composite
\n

David Hertzog and Katherine High were among the winners of this year\u2019s Breakthrough prize.<\/span>Credit: Dennis R. Wise & Colin Lenton<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

Researchers dedicated to a decades-long quest to measure the magnetic properties of the subatomic muon particle have won one of this year\u2019s US$3 million Breakthrough prizes. The results seemingly confirm the standard model of particle physics, but team member David Hertzog, a nuclear physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, says that it is not yet \u201cgame over\u201d, with mysteries remaining around why two independent methods used to calculate the model\u2019s predictions disagree drastically<\/a>. The winners of the awards, some of the most lucrative prizes in science<\/a>, were announced on 18th April.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dreams of new physics fade with latest muon magnetism result<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/article>\n<\/p>\n

Last year, the particle-physics and accelerator laboratory Fermilab announced the final results of its measurements of the muon\u2019s magnetic moment<\/a>, which causes the particle to wobble in a magnetic field1<\/a><\/sup>. This wobble, quantified by the particle\u2019s \u2018g<\/i>-factor\u2019, was pinned down to a staggering 127 parts in a billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is astonishing that human beings can measure anything to such precision,\u201d says Tsutomu Mibe, a particle physicist at Japan\u2019s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba. \u201cThe award is truly well deserved\u201d.<\/p>\n

The prize will be shared by the several hundred collaborators who were involved in the experiments at CERN, Europe\u2019s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermilab. Hertzog was \u201cexhilarated\u201d to learn of the win. \u201cThe delight was in some sense satisfaction that this whole team could be acknowledged,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Transformative gene therapies<\/h2>\n

Three life-science prizes were awarded for advances in gene therapies. Opthalmologists Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire, and physician Katherine High, all at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, were recognized for developing Luxturna, the first FDA-approved gene-augmenting therapy, which can treat an inherited retinal disease.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These science prizes want to rival the Nobels: how do they compare?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/article>\n<\/p>\n

When light enters healthy people\u2019s eyes, photons hit a molecule called 11-cis<\/i> retinal and cause it to bend and then quickly straighten back out. But in children with two faulty copies of the RPE65<\/i> gene, the molecule stays deformed, leading to blindness in adulthood. The three researchers built on Bennett and Maguire\u2019s initial tests in dogs and conducted a clinical trial in which a working RPE65<\/i> gene was injected into the retinas of children and adults \u2014 delivered using an adeno-associated virus2<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Before treatment, participants struggled to traverse an obstacle course and, in low light, bumped into things or wandered off entirely. But just 30 days after treatment, \u201cthey greatly improved their ability to navigate\u201d, says High. \u201cIt happens pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

High learnt that she had won the prize while she was on a train, and had to stifle a scream to avoid disturbing the other passengers. She plans to donate her share of the prize to a range of charities and hospitals that work with people living in poverty.<\/p>\n

Luxturna has been \u201ctransformative for one form of blindness that was untreatable\u201d, says Omar Mahroo, a retinal neuroscientist at University College London, and serves as a \u201cparadigm shift that signals hope\u201d for future gene therapies targeting other causes of blindness.<\/p>\n

\"A
\n

Key muon particle physics experiments took place at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York.<\/span>Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

Neurogeneticist Rosa Rademakers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and neurologist Bryan Traynor at the US National Institute of Aging in Bethesda, Maryland, shared a prize for independently discovering that an inherited form of frontotemporal dementia (FTD)3<\/a><\/sup> and motor neuron disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) are caused by a common mutation in the C9ORF72<\/i> gene.<\/p>\n

Rademakers, who describes the win as \u201cunexpected\u201d and \u201csurreal\u201d, discovered the connection while examining tissue samples from people with a particular type of FTD and realizing that members of their families had motor neuron disease4<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Hertzog and Katherine High were among the winners of this year\u2019s Breakthrough prize.Credit: Dennis R. Wise & Colin Lenton Researchers dedicated to a decades-long quest to measure the magnetic properties of the subatomic muon particle have won one of this year\u2019s US$3 million Breakthrough prizes. The results seemingly confirm the standard model of particle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}