NCCAM Grantee Receives 2002 Draper Award

Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize for innovative engineering achievement. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) gave the $500,000 award, also known as "engineering's Nobel Prize," to Langer for inventing medical drug delivery technologies that prolong lives and ease suffering of millions.

Langer, the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, is known as a prolific researcher and innovator, having written about 700 papers and over 400 patents that are licensed or sublicensed to more than 80 companies.

"Bob Langer was chosen for the Draper Prize both for the substance of his contributions and because he is a role model," said NAE President William Wulf. "Notable is the large number of companies his students have created, and consequently the effective transfer of technology he has created into the private sector where it becomes available to all of us."

NCCAM is supporting Langer's study of shark cartilage as a potential inhibitor of the uncontrolled growth of new capillaries (angiogenesis), which is characteristic of diseases such as solid tumor growth and metastases and rheumatoid arthritis.

For additional information about the Draper Prize, visit the NAE Web site.