The F.M. Kirby Professorship of Molecular Ophthalmology
Established by the F.M. Kirby Foundation in 1996, the chair is awarded to an outstanding professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and at the Scheie Eye Institute with a special interest in molecular diagnosis or molecular treatment for ophthalmic disease. The endowment demonstrates the Foundation’s commitment to basic medical research.
Under the leadership of F.M. Kirby, II, and his son S. Dillard Kirby, the Foundation has provided significant support to young scientists and emerging areas of research. At Penn, in addition to creating new professorships, the Foundation established the F.M. Kirby Center for Molecular Ophthalmology in 1994. With the ultimate goal of preventing, treating, and curing hereditary eye diseases through gene therapy, the molecular ophthalmology center is the first of its kind in the world.
Fred Morgan Kirby forever changed American retail by introducing a chain of five-and-dime stores that offered clear, fixed pricing. He became one of the founders of F.W. Woolworth Company and endowed the Foundation in 1931. Successive generations of the Kirby family have continued his tradition of giving to organizations that foster self-reliance or otherwise create strong, healthy communities both in the region and beyond.
Current Chairholder
Albert M. Maguire, MD
Dr. Maguire was born in Philadelphia, PA, (at the University of Pennsylvania) and graduated cum laude with a BS in Psychology from Princeton University. He received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School and completed an internship in surgery at Yale University School of Medicine and a residency in ophthalmology at the Wilmer Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He served as Chief Resident at Wilmer, completed a combined medical/surgical retinal fellowship at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, MI and was recruited to Penn and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 1992. Dr. Maguire is currently the F.M. Kirby Professor of Ophthalmology and the Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Retinal and Ophthalmic Therapeutics (CAROT) at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Maguire has devoted his research career to the conduct of gene therapy translational studies. His research and clinical expertise made it possible to test the first definitive retinal gene therapy treatment for patients with blinding retinal degenerations. He developed the methodology and carried out the majority of the preclinical surgical small and large animal gene therapy surgeries. Those studies yielded the safety and efficacy results that enabled progression to clinical trials for teams developing gene therapy for RPE65 deficiency. He served as Principal Investigator for the Phase I-III gene therapy trials that led to the first U.S. FDA-approved in vivo gene therapy product (Luxturna™. 2017), a product now administered in numerous countries. During the trials, Dr. Maguire was the first to: 1) enroll pediatric subjects with a non-lethal disease as gene therapy participants, 2) carry out ocular gene therapy readministration, and 3) run the first randomized, controlled, multi-center gene therapy Phase III gene therapy trial targeting a genetic disease. He also helped develop gene therapy surgical training programs, thereby expanding access to this technology around the world.
Dr. Maguire has been the PI and surgeon for several other gene therapy clinical trials, for conditions including choroideremia and the neovascular form of age-related macular degeneration. He was the surgeon for the first CRISPR-Cas gene editing gene therapy clinical trial (for a congenital blindness). An internationally recognized expert in gene therapy, Dr. Maguire has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed papers and dozens of book chapters and case reports. He has received the Retina Research Foundation Pyron Award, the Retina International Special Recognition Award, the Charles L. Schepens Award, and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. He also was Co-Recipient of the Champalimaud Award and the Sanford and Sue Greenberg Prize to End Blindness.
Previous Chairholders
- Samuel G. Jacobson, MD, PhD 1996–2006