To celebrate the Society’s 20th anniversary, the Netherlands Society of Gene and Cell Therapy established a new award in 2019 that seeks to honor an individual who has achieved a specific high impact contribution or a lifetime of significant contributions to the field of gene and cell therapy. The NVGCT Outstanding Achievement Award is presented at the NVGCT annual symposium. The recipient is selected from nominations presented to the board by a yearly changing nomination committee.
This new award was presented for the first time to Prof. Leonard W. Seymour.
Professor Seymour has dedicated his research to the development of novel oncolytic viruses and gene-based therapies. He is professor of Genetic Therapy at the department of Oncology, University of Oxford as well as the founding president of the British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, Secretary and Trustee of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, and an Executive Council Member of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy of Cancer. Professor Seymour is also a scientific founder and former Board member of Hybrid Biosystems Ltd., which later merged to become PsiOxus Therapeutics Ltd., where he is now a Scientific Advisor. To this day professor Seymour has published hundreds of high-impact scientific papers and dozens of patent applications. Without his substantial scientific contributions and commendable efforts to foster scientific communication and collaboration, the gene therapy field as we know it, would not have been where it is now.
