(LOS ANGELES) – Dr. Ali Khademhosseini has been awarded the 2023 Technology Innovation and Development Award from the Society of Biomaterials (SFB). The award honors those whose research, scientific innovations, and leadership are used to develop novel products or technologies to benefit patients.
Dr. Khademhosseini is the founding Director and CEO of the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI), which incorporates a variety of interdisciplinary research platforms and uses patient-derived cells for micro- and nanoscale technologies to achieve 'personalized' approaches to medical problems.
Prior to coming to TIBI, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics and the Levi Knight Professor of Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, and Radiology at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). Before UCLA, he was at Harvard University, a Professor at Harvard Medical School and faculty at the Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and associate faculty at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Khademhosseini has pioneered high-performance, personally tailored biomaterials and has been a leader in tissue engineering, vascular tissue biofabrication, cell-based therapies, and stem cell regulation.
His extensive work has produced several novel products and innovative technologies to benefit medical patients, which have come about through multi-national research collaborations, the generation of 700+ papers and 50+ patents, and the founding of three start-up companies.
Among these innovations, the engineering of shear-thinning materials termed Gel Embolic Materials (GEM) developed for the embolization of blood vessels is of particular significance. The GEM technology is an up-and-coming technology for replacing the current gold standard in embolization using metallic coils. Based on this technology, Dr. Khademhosseini co-founded Obsidio Medical (http://obsidiomed.com/) to pursue clinical applications of this invention. Due to its semi-solid nature, the GEM can be placed locally and customized for each person. Different than other embolic materials that can require time to form an obstruction to blood flow, the GEM technology quickly fills the targeted vasculature and instantly creates a barrier. The GEM technology was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Boston Scientific Corporation acquired Obsidio to enhance its interventional oncology and embolization portfolio.
Dr. Khademhosseini has a long history of achievements, starting with his early years as the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the US government for early-career investigators. Since then, he has received over 70 major national and international awards. This award is Khademhosseini's third from the Society, following his 2017 Clemson Award and the 2011 Young Investigator Award. It will be formally awarded during the Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting and Exposition 2023.
The SFB is a multidisciplinary society of academic, healthcare, governmental, and business professionals dedicated to promoting advancements in all aspects of biomaterial science, education, and professional standards to enhance human health and quality of life.