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Friday Evening Lecture Series
08/10/07
Biomaterials and How They Will Change Our Lives
Robert S. Langer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Introduction by Marlene Belfort
Lecture Abstract:
Advances in drug delivery and tissue engineering are revolutionizing medical therapies. New drug delivery technologies including novel polymers and intelligent microchips promise to create new treatments for cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses. Furthermore, by combining mammalian cells with synthetic polymers, new approaches for engineering tissues are being developed that may someday help repair tissues for patients with burns, damaged cartilage, paralysis, and vascular disease.
Dr. Robert S. Langer is one of the 13 Institute Professors (the highest honor awarded to a faculty member) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written over 900 articles and also has more than 550 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States. Dr. Langer's patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 180 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, and medical device companies; a number of these companies were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. He served as a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 to 2002 and was its Chairman from 1999 to 2002. Dr. Langer’s work is at the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study of development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, DNA and RNAi, continuously at controlled rates for prolonged periods of time.
Dr. Langer has received nearly 150 major awards, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent to the Nobel Prize for engineers and the world’s most prestigious engineering prize, from the National Academy of Engineering. He is also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award. In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Langer is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three U.S. National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.
Forbes Magazine and Bio World have named Dr. Langer one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world; Forbes Magazine selected him as one of the 15 innovators worldwide who will reinvent our future, and Parade Magazine named Dr. Langer as one of the 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” Dr. Langer received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Chemical Engineering.
Dr. Marlene Belfort will introduce Dr. Langer. Dr. Belfort is Director of the Division of Genetic Disorders at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, Albany and Distinguished Professor of Molecular Genetics at SUNY Albany. She is an adjunct professor in the Departments of Biology (SUNY) and both Biology and Chemical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). After graduating with a B.S. degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Belfort received her Ph.D. degree in molecular biology at the University of California at Irvine, and performed post-doctoral work at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel, where she holds an honorary doctorate. She chaired the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Microbial Genetics study section, served on the board of directors of the RNA Society, and currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Evolutionary Biology Program, and the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle. Dr. Belfort has organized international meetings in nucleic acid dynamics and evolution for the Keystone Conferences, FASEB, and Gordon Research Conferences and has served on the editorial board of the journals Gene, Methods in Molecular and Cellular Biology, RNA, Nucleic Acids Research, Journal of Molecular Biology, and Journal of Bacteriology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology. Her research interests are in molecular biology, its impact on evolution, and application to biotechnology. Her research is funded by grants from the NIH and the National Science Foundation.
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