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Robert Langer is one of the world’s most prolific, influential, and acclaimed social innovators of our time, and the full force of his impact will continue to effect the globe for generations to come. He has been referred to as “a medical pioneer in the guise of an engineer,” creating new science by revolutionizing the delivery of drugs and the engineering of human tissue.
Tim Zak probes Langer's tenacious nature and perseverance in the face of public criticism and failed experiments. Zak asks, "What gives you the courage to fail until you succeed?"
The answer is simple: Dr. Langer has a personal drive to improve people's health.
This whole show could be dedicated to listing out his accomplishments—close to 900 articles and nearly 500 issued or pending patents, which have been licensed to over 180 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, and medical device companies worldwide; over 140 major awards including the 10th Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy, and Employment; the Draper Prize (which is the National Academy of Engineering’s Nobel Prize for engineers); and the Lemelson-MIT Prize (which is the world’s largest for invention). He is one of very few people ever elected to all three U.S. National Academies—engineering, science, and medicine—and the youngest in history at age 43 to ever receive this distinction. Earlier this year, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Forbes, Discover, Time, and CNN have all recognized him as one of the globe’s most influential innovators.
Professor Langer developed the approach and materials used in controlled drug delivery systems. He is also recognized for the development of dime-size chemotherapy wafers to kill cancer cells at the site of tumors; remote-control systems that regulate the rate that drugs are released; the prototype of an implantable “pharmacy-on-a-chip” to monitor a patient’s blood chemistry and prescribe carefully measured doses of the proper medicine at the precise time needed; and 3-D polymer scaffolds for growing human tissue.
Langer’s research laboratory at MIT is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world, maintaining about $6 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. He has participated in the founding of more than two dozen companies.
from Wikipedia:
Robert S. Langer (born August 29, 1948 in Albany, New York) is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and maintains activity in the departments of chemical engineering and the biological engineering division at MIT. He is a distinguished and highly regarded researcher in biotechnology, especially in the fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. Dr. Langer's research laboratory at MIT is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world, maintaining about $6 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers.
Langer's contributions to medicine and the emerging fields of biotechnology are highly recognized and respected around the world. He is considered a pioneer of many new technologies, including transdermal delivery systems, which allow the administration of drugs or extraction of analytes from the body through the skin without needles or other invasive methods. He and the researchers in his lab have also made significant advances in tissue engineering, such as the creation of vascularized engineered muscle tissue and engineered blood vessels.
Langer holds more than 500 granted or pending patents and has authored more than 800 scientific papers. He has proven adroit at bringing together academia and industry and has participated in the founding of more than two dozen companies. He has received numerous awards, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. He is the youngest person in history (at 43) to be elected to all three American science academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Langer received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in chemical engineering. He earned his Sc.D. in chemical engineering from MIT in 1974. His dissertation was entitled "Enzymatic regeneration of ATP" and his advisors were Clark K. Colton and Michael Archer. From 1974-1977 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow for famed cancer researcher Judah Folkman at the Children's Hospital Boston and at Harvard Medical School. He has been an advisor to influential scholars in the fields of biomaterials, drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, and vascular medicine: W. Mark Saltzman, David J. Mooney, Lisa E. Freed, and Elazer R. Edelman.
Robert Langer and his wife, Laura, whom he met at MIT and who has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, have three children.
Langer has an honorary degree from a number of universities from around the world including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the ETH Zurich.
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