Inventor of controlled drug release wins technology prize

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

HELSINKI (AFP) — An American professor who developed innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release on Wednesday won the 800,000-euro (1.2-million-dollar) Millennium Technology Prize.

Robert Langer, 59, is a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He used controlled drug release for the first time in 1986, when he and neurosurgeon Henry Brem devised chemotherapy wafers used to treat brain cancer.

The wafer, the size of a small coin, releases the cancer drug slowly in the area from which a tumour has been removed, killing any remaining cancer cells on the spot and causing fewer side effects on other organs than traditional drugs.

This so-called intelligent drug release is also used to treat heart disease...