Commercializing technology from his MIT lab - Robert Langer 560 issued or pending patents worldwide

MIT Entrepreneurial Notice - September 11, 2007

 

 

Hello all,

 

Welcome to a new academic year of the Entrepreneurs Club.  We will kick off the semester tonight, Tuesday, 9/11/07, at 6 pm in 56-114  with a visit from Professor Robert Langer.  Professor Langer is one of MIT's most prolific scientist/entrepreneurs, and will speak about his experience commercializing technology from his lab.  His bio is copied below.

 

I hope to see many of you there tonight for what promises to be a great talk.

 

-Manny

 

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Robert Langer is one of 13 Institute Professors (the highest honor awarded to a faculty member) at MIT.  Dr. Langer has written over 940 articles.  He also has more than 560 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 over 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 United States Food and Drug Administration's SCIENCE Board, the FDA's highest advisory board, from 1995 -- 2002 and as Chairman from 1999-2002.

 

His work is at the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, DNA and RNAi, continuously at controlled rates for prolonged periods of time. Work is in progress in the following areas:

•	Investigating the mechanism of release from polymeric delivery systems with concomitant microstructural analysis and mathematical modeling.
•	Studying applications of these systems including the development of effective long-term delivery systems for insulin, anti-cancer drugs, growth factors, gene therapy agents and vaccines.
•	Developing controlled release systems that can be magnetically, ultrasonically, or enzymatically triggered to increase release rates.
•	Synthesizing new biodegradable polymeric delivery systems which will ultimately be absorbed by the body.
•	Creating new approaches for delivering drugs such as proteins and genes across complex barriers in the body such as the blood-brain barrier, the intestine, the lung and the skin.
•	Researching new ways to create tissue and organs including creating new polymer systems for tissue engineering.
•	Stem cell research including controlling growth and differentiation.
•	Creating new biomaterials with shape memory or surface switching properties.
•	Angiogenesis inhibition

Dr. Langer has received nearly 150 major awards.  In 2007, he received the 2006 United States National Medal of Science. In 2002, he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of 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 ; 68 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005) and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research.  In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.   In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world's largest prize for invention for being "one of history's most prolific inventors in medicine."  In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences.  He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction. 

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world.  Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area.  Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future.  Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America. Parade Magazine (2004) selected Langer as one of 6 "Heroes whose research may save your life."  He has served, at various times, on 15 boards of directors and 30 Scientific Advisory Boards of such companies as Wyeth, Alkermes, Mitsubishi Pharmaceuticals , Warner-Lambert, and Momenta Pharmaceuticals.  Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland) , the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) , the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England) , the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University , Northwestern University and Uppsala University (Sweden).  He received his Bachelor's Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.