The MUSC Foundation for Research Development, in what is to become an annual event spotlighting biomedical invention and innovation, will feature Lemelson-MIT Prize winner Robert Langer, Sc.D., to speak at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28, in the Storm Eye Institute Auditorium.

Langer, a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, and holder of more than 300 patents, will present “Biomaterials and How They Will Change Our Lives: Discoveries in the Lab and Their Evolution into Products.”

“The foundation looks forward to making this an annual event focusing on significant university research which has resulted in new products and services in the biomedical arena,” said Ken Roozen, Ph.D., executive director of the foundation. “I’m particularly delighted we could inaugurate this series with such a creative and prolific faculty member from an institution which is a leader in technology transfer.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Harvard University inventor and pioneer in biomedical and chemical engineering was named the winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for 1998, the world’s largest single cash prize for American invention and innovation. Langer’s discoveries are at the heart of the emerging technology of tissue engineering and the multibillion-dollar controlled drug delivery industry.

As a biomedical engineer, whose major focus is biomaterials, Langer’s groundbreaking research in the development of new systems for controlled delivery of pharmaceuticals, specifically his work with polymers, has led to a variety of novel drug delivery systems including a treatment for brain cancer developed with Dr. Henry Brem of Johns Hopkins University Medical School. This is the first FDA-approved treatment for brain cancer in 20 years and the first polymer-based treatment to deliver chemotherapy to the tumor site.

A pioneer in the field of tissue engineering, Langer discovered, with surgeon Jay Vacanti, that synthetic polymers could be seeded with mammalian cells to produce replacement tissue or organs. These discoveries formed a basis for creating new tissues such as artificial skin for burn victims, or cartilage or other tissue for patients suffering from tissue loss or organ failure. Tissue loss and organ failure cost the nation more than $500 billion in health care costs in 1997.

In addition to drug delivery systems and tissue repair, Langer’s research has been used in vaccines, diagnostics, innovative waste disposal technolgies, and novel therapeutics. In 1997, sales of advanced drug delivery systems in the United States were approximately $14 billion.