Napoleone Ferrara

Dr. Ferrara is a Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology and Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. In his former career at Genentech, he isolated and cloned VEGF and created the first anti-VEGF antibody. This led to the development of Avastin, which has become part of the standard treatment for a variety of cancers, and Lucentis®, which is FDA-approved for wet age-related macular degeneration. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. His many awards include the Lasker-DeBakey Award (2010), the Breakthrough Prize (2013) in Life Sciences and Champalimaud Vision Award.