Luk Vandenberghe

Luk Vandenberghe, Ph.D., is distinguished for his breakthroughs in the AAV field, including the discovery and characterization of new AAV serotypes, and improved understanding of immune responses to AAV vectors. He is director of the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vandenberghe has discovered, developed, and characterized some of the most widely used gene therapy carriers for in vivo and ex vivo applications, including AAV, adeno- and lentiviral-based vectors.

In 2015, his laboratory published the first work describing Ancestral AAV (Anc-AAV) Technology, using computational and evolutionary methods to predict novel conformations of the AAV particle. This unique synthetic biology and computational design approach have yielded Anc80, a putative ancestor of AAV1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, rh.10, and AAV9, which has been shown in mice and non-human primates to be a safe and potent therapeutic gene delivery vector in preclinical studies. Anc80 was further shown to target auditory hair cells with high efficiency in a manner that can lead to functional correction of hearing loss in mice.

Dr. Vandenberghe received his training in the fields of engineering, virology, and gene therapy at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.