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Purdue professor honored for patents
October 12, 2006THE NEWS
Phillip Low, a distinguished professor of chemistry at Purdue University, was honored Wednesday night with the university's Outstanding Commercialization Award.
WHAT IT IS
The award, presented annually to a member of the faculty or staff, honors those whose work has translated into commercial applications.
THE IMPACT
Low has secured some 28 worldwide patents and 32 more are pending. The technologies in his lab have led to the formation of Endocyte Inc., a Purdue Research Park company that employees 45 people. Endocyte develops receptor-targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases such as diabetes.
His work is helping fight cancer, Crohn's disease, diabetes and many other illnesses through a "Trojan horse" therapy he devised, which sneaks large molecules into the disease-causing cells. It can be used to directly treat or even detect such diseases.
WINNER'S TAKE
"The ability to get large molecules, such as proteins, antibodies or toxins, across the cell membrane was a problem that had defied the scientific community for years," Low said. "We use the vitamin folic acid as a Trojan horse to carry molecules undetected past the gates of a cancer cell."
THE PLAYERS
In addition to Low, 37 other faculty and staff members were honored by the Purdue Research Foundation for their commercial accomplishments.
-- Tanya Brown/tbrown@ journalandcourier.com