Mark Robert Prausnitz is an American chemical engineer, currently Regents’ Professor and J. Erskine Love, Jr. Chair in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

, He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Adjunct Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is a national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the nation's first public, research ...

. He is known for pioneering microneedle technology for minimally invasive drug and vaccine administration, which has found applications in transdermal, ocular, oral, and sustained release delivery systems. He has published over 300 research papers in collaboration with over 100 different senior collaborations in universities, industry partners, and government. His publications have been cited more than 47,000 times with an h-index of 109 as of February 2022. He is also inventor on 70 US patents (issued or pending)

Biography

Prausnitz received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical engineering from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1988. He joined ALZA corporation as junior chemical engineer (1988-1989) where he worked on transdermal drug delivery systems. He then pursued graduate studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of

Robert S. Langer Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly the Germeshaus ...

and James Weaver, and received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1994, for a thesis “Electroporation of Tissue and Cells for Drug Delivery Applications”.

Teaching

At Georgia Tech, he co-developed and taught with Andreas Bommarius two new interdisciplinary courses with a pharmaceutical focus – “Drug Design, Development, and Delivery” and “Pharmaceutical Development”

Contributions to science and medicine

Drug and vaccine delivery to the skin using microneedle patches

Prausnitz is best known as the founder of

Microneedle drug delivery Microneedles or Microneedle patches or Microarray patches are micron-scaled medical devices used to administer vaccines, drugs, and other therapeutic agents. While microneedles were initially explored for transdermal drug delivery applications, th ...

, having published the first paper on microneedle use for drug delivery in 1998 , conducted the first clinical trials of drug and vaccine delivery using microneedles, founded seven companies based on the technologs. His microneedle patches painlessly applied to the skin for simplified vaccination are currently being studied in a phase 1/2 clinical trial of

measles Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...

and

rubella Rubella, also known as German measles or three-day measles, is an infection caused by the rubella virus. This disease is often mild, with half of people not realizing that they are infected. A rash may start around two weeks after exposure and ...

vaccination in West Africa with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, Prausnitz published the first paper on ocular drug delivery using microneedles. In 2011, he co-founded Clearside Biomedical to further develop his foundational work on suprachoroidal space (SCS) delivery via microneedles for targeted injection into the eye. He has collaborated at Emory University and elsewhere to develop hollow and solid microneedle systems to target drug delivery to sites of action within the eye in both the posterior and anterior segments.

Transdermal drug delivery using electroporation and other methods

He published the first paper on skin electroporation and demonstrated its feasibility for transdermal drug delivery in 1993. He has studied mechanisms of creating transient pores in cell membranes to promote intracellular delivery of biomolecules using electroporation, ultrasound-mediated cavitation, and laser-activated nanoparticles.

Co-founded companies

Prausnitz is an entrepreneur who has co-founded several companies: * Redeon (acquired by BioValve Technologies) * Microneedle Systems * Clearside Biomedical * Micron Biomedical * Microstar Biotech * Aldena Therapeutics * Vimela Therapeutics

Awards and honors

* Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2009) * Fellow, National Academy of Inventors (2014) * Fellow, American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (2017) * Fellow, Controlled Release Society (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prausnitz, Mark American chemical engineers Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors American inventors Stanford University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Georgia Tech faculty Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Year of birth missing (living people) Living people