Robert S. Langer

Robert S. Langer is heralded as one of the most prolific inventors in the history of medicine, the father of controlled drug release and tissue engineering. His research laboratory at MIT is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world, maintaining about $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. His discoveries have saved countless lives and launched a $20 billion-a-year industry. Every year, 6,200 Americans die awaiting transplants of organs like the liver, heart and lung, but Robert Langer is creating a future where spare organs can be grown in the laboratory. IN addition to his endowed chair at MIT, he is a faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. In this podcast, recorded at the Top of the Hay, in Washington D.C.'s Hay-Adams Hotel, during the 2012 International Achievement Summit, he reflect on his career in science, the importance of the patent system, and his ideas about the treatment of cancer.