Kyoto Prize for tissue engineering

Robert Samuel Langer isn't one to brag. The biomedical engineer may just have won the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology, but he isn't showing off - rather the opposite.

"I look at the people who won this prize, and it's very humbling to be in their company," said Robert Langer about winning the award. "I think the Kyoto Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world, and to be included in a group of people who won it before me - that's a really big honor."

The Inamori foundation has awarded the prize since 1985. Kazuo Inamori, founder of the technology corporation Kyocera, created the foundation in 1984. It honors extraordinary personalities from the fields of culture and science with the Kyoto Prize. Langer, who works as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is widely considered to be the founder of tissue engineering.

Fruitful cooperation

Tissue engineering is the interdisciplinary science of growing human tissue to repair or replace the damaged original. Currently, tissue engineering is mostly used when it comes to skin and cartilage transplants - but it can also work for blood vessels and even organs. Regeneration or replacement of damaged tissue supports healing processes.

Langer developed tissue engineering together with surgeon Joseph Philip Vacanti about 30 years ago: "I provided more of the materials and science, and he provided a lot from the clinical side of things," Langer told DW.

Vacanti treated patients who were dying of liver failure. Langer remembers: "He came to see me one day - when I had known him for a number of years already - and said,'Is there any way that we can come up with a strategy to help these people?'"

The surgeon and the engineer got to work. "We had this idea that maybe we could use polymers, and put cells on them," Langer said. "But originally we put them in a two-dimensional construct, kind of like a coin, and then we didn't get enough cells in there," Langer explained. "So we put it into a three-dimensional system and that actually worked."

While the first experimental success came in the 1980s, the first "products" weren't available until roughly 15 years later. Artificially grown tissue has been in use for a while now, for example to treat burn victims.

Pushing the research forward

Research also aims to understand how cells grow on different materials, how stem cells grow, and how they could help create tissue and organs. Tissue engineering is an enormously wide field of research which is also of interest at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart, Germany.

Heike Walles is one of the institute's tissue engineering researchers. She has heard Langer speak at conferences and discuss various aspects in the field. Walles says that Langer not only founded the branch of research into tissue engineering, but also strongly influenced the field and together with his colleagues moved the science forward.

"They showed that it's possible to have cells multiply outside of the human body, and that it's important to connect these cells with many different materials to see how the materials influence the cells," Walles said. "Langer has contributed greatly to our progress."

Another area of research that's close to Langer's heart is the so-called drug delivery system. "If you tried to swallow a protein like insulin, you wouldn't get it into the blood stream," Langer explained. "It's just too big."

Once injected into the bloodstream, however, the proteins work right away. "We have developed the first systems that could protect them from harm and deliver them over long times," said Langer. "And that led to a variety of products that are now used to treat prostate cancer, schizophrenia, Type 2 diabetes. It's become a pretty large area."

The man behind the research

For Robert Langer, it's the people behind the science that matter. He is currently working on nanotechnology to treat cancer, and on vaccines. "We are creating new vaccine delivery systems that hopefully will help people with polio or AIDS," Langer said.

Langer is also a father of three and values his family life. He recently took his son to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and his daughter to several conferences in Europe in August. His wife accompanies him to Kyoto. That's important for him.

Langer is highly regarded in his field, and not just due to his research achievements. "Langer showed that cooperation is possible," said Walles. "There are so many different concepts in developing materials that there is enough work for everyone," Walles added, and emphasized that due to Langer's dedication to teamwork, "he really deserves the prize."

Langer said he hopes to impart some wisdom with the young people who work with him: "The thing I want to achieve is getting more ideas out into the world to help people."

The Kyoto Prize includes $438,000 (351,000 euros) in award money. Past winner include primatologist Jane Goodall, artists Roy Lichtenstein and Nam June Paik, cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, and many other luminaries. Including Robert Samuel Langer.