TThree scientists – Robert Langer, Paul Alivisatos and Chad Mirkin – received the 2024 Kavli Nanoscience Prize for their groundbreaking work in biomedicine, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters announced on Wednesday.
The $1 million Kavli Prize recognizes scientists once every two years for significant contributions and breakthroughs in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Of the 65 laureates who have received the prize since 2008, 10 have received the Nobel Prize.
Together, the laureates’ work has revolutionized medical treatment at the nanoscale – with applications from therapies and vaccines to bioimaging and diagnostics. “Their work underlines the immense potential of nanoscience to shape our understanding and improve our lives in profound ways,” Lise Øvreås, president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, wrote about the laureates.
Serial entrepreneur Langer – he co-founded Moderna and launched a new biotech this week – is a prolific scientist, with more than 415,000 citations and 1,400 articles to his name. The Kavli Prize focused on his work to improve drug delivery.
As a postdoctoral researcher, Langer created a delivery system that controlled the release of drugs with a polymer carrier. The idea, and even Langer’s results, were met with skepticism. In 1976, Langer and his postdoctoral mentor Judah Folkman showed how his drug delivery system could be used to slow tumor growth. But he didn’t stop there.
Shrinking the polymer carriers down to the nanoscale allowed them to penetrate drugs into more tissues, but the unstable delivery systems often fell apart or were destroyed by the body before reaching their target. So Langer engineered the nanoparticle complexes so that they could remain intact for hours, allowing for highly controlled release of their drugs.
After his breakthrough, Langer said his work took a number of directions: synthesizing new materials, changing release timing and applying the technology to vaccines. “And then I had other ideas, which weren’t just about drug delivery – I had ideas about drug removal, ideas about cell delivery,” he said.
Langer has licensed or sublicensed nearly 1,500 patents to more than 400 pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Companies like Alkermes are using Langer’s nanotechnology in the form of “injectable microspheres” to treat type 2 diabetes, schizophrenia and more.
Langer said that when he first joined Folkman at Boston Children’s Hospital, he was the only engineer — it was unheard of for chemical engineers to do postdoctoral work in a surgical oncologist’s lab.
“It’s worth taking risks. I think it’s worth being rejected, and I think it’s worth trying to strive for things that will really make a difference,” Langer said . “That is a lesson that I have learned for myself, but that I also try to convey to my students.”
Physical chemist Alivisatos, current president of the University of Chicago, was recognized for his application of quantum dots in medicine. These nanoparticles absorb and emit light at a wavelength depending on their size, powering many television and computer screens. Discovered in 1980, quantum dots were limited to these technological applications until Alivisatos came onto the market. He discovered how to make them compatible with living systems by encasing the quantum dots in a silica shell, making them stable and soluble in water.
Now quantum dots can be used as fluorescent markers to help biomedical researchers study cells and even apply therapies. For example, in photodynamic therapy to treat cancer, light emitted from quantum dots can activate drugs to cause the death of cancer cells.
Chad Mirkin, a chemist at Northwestern University, pioneered the construction of spherical nucleic acids, or SNAs — a Koosh ball-like collection of synthetic DNA or RNA strands bound to a nanoparticle core. Mirkin discovered that SNAs can be used as diagnostic tools, detecting extracellular DNA signatures, proteins and other molecules that indicate the presence of disease.
Later, Mirkin had his eye on building SNA diagnostics that would work in cells. But nucleic acids and cells, both negatively charged, repelled each other. It turned out to be impossible to ingest the SNAs without toxic transfection agents.
Mirkin said it took his team more than a decade to find a solution. Finally, they discovered that SNAs could enter cells using transport vessels called endosomes. With that kind of access, they could also be used for treatments: SNAs have been shown to penetrate brain tumors, regulate cancer gene expression and slow tumor growth.
“Sometimes it’s good to ignore the conventional wisdom and just say out of curiosity, ‘What’s happening?’” Mirkin said.
Recently, the Mirkin lab expanded even further, delving into SNA-based cancer immunotherapy and Covid-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic.
“It wasn’t good enough for us to just do the science,” Mirkin said. “Let’s make scientific discoveries, but let’s connect the dots and ask how we use those discoveries to create new technologies that improve the world.”