The 2019 Sue Rosenau Legacy Award Winner!

The Legacy of Angels Foundation, which vigorously supports research into treatments and a cure for Krabbe disease and Cystic Fibrosis, and works to promote the expansion of newborn screening, announces the recipient of the 2019 Sue Rosenau Legacy Award. The award was created to honor the late Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of The Legacy of Angels Foundation, Sue Rosenau. This remarkable woman died on July 31st, 2018. To keep Sue’s legacy alive within the Foundation and community at large, The Legacy of Angels Foundation honors an individual for his\her achievements in Sue’s name each year. This legacy award recognizes an inspirational leader who has delivered extraordinary contributions, worked to propel progress towards a better treatment, and continuously gives altruistic support to the patient community; a replica of Sue Rosenau.

This year’s recipient is Dr. David A. Wenger, PhD, Director of the Lysosomal Disease Testing Laboratory at Sidney Kimmel Medical College (formerly Jefferson Medical College), part of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This laboratory was established in 1973 by Dr. Wenger, and currently receives the largest number of samples for lysosomal diseases in the world. Testing has resulted in the diagnosis of over 4,600 individuals with a lysosomal disease.

Dr. Wenger is known for being the first to purify the missing enzyme in Krabbe disease, GALC, and the first to clone the GALC cDNA gene. He’s also identified over 100 mutations causing Krabbe disease in humans, successfully placed human and mouse GALC cDNA into several viral vectors including retroviral, adeno-associated viruses, lentiviruses and SV40. Dr. Wenger has transduced oligodendrocytes from the twitcher mouse with viral vectors containing human GALC cDNA, and corrected them to a normal phenotype. He has published many prominent peer-reviewed journal articles. Thanks to Dr. Wenger’s five decades of commitment and hard work, the Krabbe disease community remains hopeful that a clinical trial for Krabbe disease will be available by 2020.