Professor George Georgiou has been elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Georgiou is the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #9 and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, and molecular genetics and microbiology at The University of Texas at Austin.
George Georgiou
Professor George Georgiou has been elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Georgiou is the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #9 and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, and molecular genetics and microbiology at The University of Texas at Austin.
Georgiou is a world authority in the discovery, development, and manufacturing of protein therapeutics. He is co-inventor of over 45 U.S. patents and patent applications that have been licensed to 16 companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Technologies developed by his laboratories will directly benefit thousands of patients. Approved biologics produced using Georgiou’s technologies include ranizumab (trade name Lucentis by Roche) for macular regeneration, parathyroid hormone 1-84 (trade name Preotact by NPS Pharmaceuticals) for osteoporosis, and salmon calcitonin (trade name sCT by Unigene) for osteoporosis.
Georgiou is an internationally known scientist and engineer whose contributions in the biochemical, cellular, and medical fields have been recognized by a large number of international awards. Using chemical and biomedical engineering principles, Georgiou and his associates have addressed numerous medical problems. In addition to therapeutics manufacturing, key medical contributions of his research group include antibody therapeutics and cancer therapeutic enzymes. Georgiou’s team engineered Anthim, the leading therapeutic antibody for inhalation anthrax, which has successfully undergone clinical evaluation by Elusys Therapeutics Inc. with approval expected in the near future. He has engineered antibodies that can potently mediate the maturation of human dendritic cells and thus activate the immune system to destroy malignant cells. This technology opens up an entirely new therapeutic approach in cancer treatment. He has developed numerous tools for therapeutic antibody discovery that have been licensed and are in use by several major pharmaceutical companies. In addition, Georgiou pioneered the engineering of catalytically and pharmacologically optimized human enzymes, namely arginases with high catalytic activity and stability in serum for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinomas, metastatic melanomas and prostate carcinomas; human methione hydrolases for the treatment of neuroblastomas and possibly gliomas; and second generation human asparaginases for adult lymphoblastic leukemias.
Previously, Georgiou was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and to the Academy of Texas for Medicine, Engineering and Science. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Among other major awards, he has received the 2007 Jay Bailey Award from the Society of Biological Engineers, the 2007 AMGEN Award in Biochemical Engineering, the 2005 Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the 2004 Professional Progress Award from AIChE, and the 2003 Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology of the American Chemical Society. In 2004 he received the Hamilton Award, the Research Excellence Award for Best Paper by The University of Texas at Austin. In 2008, the AIChE named Georgiou as one of the “100 Eminent Engineers of the Modern Era.”
Georgiou earned his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in the United Kingdom and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. He has been at The University of Texas at Austin since 1986 and has been instrumental in building up bioengineering in both the Chemical Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Departments. He has educated more than 100 Ph.D. and postdoctoral students, many of them now professors in other departments. He has published more than 340 original contributions with more than 9000 citations.
Georgiou is the third faculty member of The University of Texas at Austin and second member of the Cockrell School of Engineering faculty to be elected to the Institute of Medicine.
