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224 THE NAI PROFILE

People were taking off-the-shelf materials and apply- When reviewing Langer’s career and hearing the
ing them to every single hair care product and with sincerity of his sentiments when discussing his work,
very little scientific fundamentals. Every single prod- you realize that his productiveness and intellectual
uct for anti-frizz has silicone as the main ingredient, generosity are quite simply products of who he is: a
and that doesn’t work that well. It doesn’t keep mois- genuinely nice person with a passion for service. His
ture out that well, and that’s the issue with frizz. We dream was always to help people, and he lives that
just took a more fundamental look and asked what dream every day.
would you really want from a material to keep mois-
ture out, and we examined the fundamentals and FURTHER READING
came up with one specific material, and that’s how 1. Langer R, Brem H, Falterman K, Klein M,
we solved that problem. Another example that relates Folkman J. Isolation of a cartilage factor that
to what you said is a product to give hair more body. inhibits tumor neovascularization. Science.
Dan Anderson, one of my former postdocs who is a 1976;193:70-72.
professor now at MIT, and I designed this library of 2. Langer R. Controlled release: a new approach to
polymers for gene therapy agents. There are literally drug delivery, Tech Rev. 1981;83:26-34.
thousands and thousands of polymers in that library, 3. Langer R. New methods of drug delivery. Science.
and we have composition of matter patents on them 1990;249:1527-1533.
so that you could fish one out for gene therapy, but 4. Langer R, Vacanti J. Tissue engineering. Science.
you could also fish others out for other things. We 1993;260:920-926.
picked one out that gave hair a lot more body, and so 5. Gref R, Minamitake Y, Peracchia M, Trubetskoy
this built off some of the other things we were already V, Torchillin V, Langer R. Biodegradable long-cir-
doing and had already done in the lab. culating polymeric nanospheres. Science.
1994;263:1600-1603.
CONCLUSION 6. Langer R, Vacanti J. Artificial organs. Sci Am.
As if to reaffirm his prodigious productive capac- 1995;273:100-103.
ities, in the brief interval between the interview and 7. Langer R. Drug delivery and targeting. Nature.
the write-up, Langer has been named as a finalist for 1998;392(Supp):5-10.
another major prize, the 2016 European Inventor 8. Langer R, Tirrell D. Designing materials for biol-
Award (he subsequently received that award); has ogy and medicine. Nature. 2004;428:487-492.
published a paper in Nature Materials on a “second 9. Khademhosseini A, Vacanti J, Borenstein J,
skin” technology that was picked up by every major Langer R. Microscale technologies for tissue
news outlet in the country; and has taken yet another engineering and biology. PNAS. 2006;103:2480-
company, Selecta Biosciences, public. Taken in the 2487.
context of his CV, which in the complete version 10. Peer D, Karp J, Hong S, Farokhzad O, Margalit R,
occupies some 70-odd pages, one understands that Langer R. Nanocarriers: emerging platforms for
this is par for the course for Langer. cancer therapy. , Nat Nanotechnol. 2007;2:751-
His level of output is all the more incredible when 760.
you consider that Langer is well-known for devoting a 11. Langer R. Biomaterials and biotechnology: from
large number of his waking hours to advising others— the discovery of the first angiogenesis inhibitors
from undergraduates to fellow researchers to biotech to the development of controlled drug delivery
entrepreneurs—both in person and by phone. It is systems and the foundation of tissue engineering,
not just an apocryphal tale that Langer will respond J Biomed Mater Res. 2013;101A:2449-2455.
to requests at lightning speed; it’s factual, with rarely 12. Langer R, Fuller J, Levin M. Entrepreneurship in
more than a few minutes elapsing between his receipt Biomaterials. In: Ratner D, Hoffman S, Schoen
rd
of a message and his response. F, editors. Biomaterials science. 3 ed. Oxford