Philip Felgner

Last updated
Philip Felgner
Born
Philip Louis Felgner

(1950-02-07) 7 February 1950 (age 74)
Frankenmuth, Michigan, U.S.
Alma mater Michigan State University (B.S., M.S., Ph.D)
Known for Lipofection technologies
Awards Princess of Asturias Awards for Technical and Scientific Research (2021)
Robert Koch Prize (2022)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions University of California, Irvine

Philip Louis Felgner (born 7 February 1950) is an American biochemist and immunologist, specialized in lipofection technology and genetics. [1] He is one of the developers of the vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently the director of the UCI Vaccine Research & Development Center as well as the Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility. [2]

In 1972, he graduated in biochemistry from the Michigan State University, earning his master's degree in 1975 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia. [3]

While working at Syntex in the mid-1980s, Felgner pioneered the use of artificially-created cationic lipids (positively-charged lipids) to bind lipids to nucleic acids in order to transfect the latter into cells. [4] Later while working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, he performed experiments on the transfection of RNA into human, rat, mouse, Xenopus, and Drosophila cells, work which was published in 1989. [5] In 1990, while working at Vical, he collaborated with the University of Wisconsin, discovering that injection of pDNA and mRNA into mouse skeletal muscle resulted in high protein expression levels. [6] [7] These research are recognized as among the earliest steps towards mRNA vaccine development. [8]

In 2021, he was awarded the Princess of Asturias Awards for Technical and Scientific Research along Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi, and Sarah Gilbert. [9]

In 2022, Philip Felgner received the A.D. Bangham FRS Life Achievement Award, an award named in honor of Dr. Alec Douglas Bangham, known as the father of liposomes. [10]

In 2022, Philip Felgner was awarded the Robert Koch Prize, one of the stepping-stones to eventual Nobel Prize recognition for scientists in the fields of microbiology and immunology, for his fundamental contributions to the development of lipofection technology, a technology widely used in basic research in medicine for introducing active substances into cells and also the basis of modern mRNA vaccines. [11] [12]

In 2022, Philip Felgner was named Fellow by National Academy of Inventors. [13] As of 2022, he has published 280 papers that have been cited 44,000 times and has 53 U.S. patents and 56 foreign patents, including 14 licensed patents. [14]

In 2023, the pioneering work of synthesizing the first cationic lipid (DOTMA) (lipofectin) for DNA and RNA delivery into cells by Philip Felgner was mentioned in the advanced scientific information posted by the Nobel Prize committee for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. [15] [16]

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References

  1. ↑ Felgner, P L; Gadek, T R; Holm, M; Roman, R; Chan, H W; Wenz, M; Northrop, J P; Ringold, G M; Danielsen, M (November 1987). "Lipofection: a highly efficient, lipid-mediated DNA-transfection procedure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 84 (21): 7413–7417. Bibcode:1987PNAS...84.7413F. doi: 10.1073/pnas.84.21.7413 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   299306 . PMID   2823261.
  2. ↑ "Phil Felgner, PhD, joins Physiology & Biophysics | Department of Physiology and Biophysics | School of Medicine | University of California, Irvine". www.physiology.uci.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  3. ↑ Philip L. Felgner UCI profile
  4. ↑ Felgner, P L; Gadek, T R; Holm, M; Roman, R; Chan, H W; Wenz, M; Northrop, J P; Ringold, G M; Danielsen, M (November 1987). "Lipofection: a highly efficient, lipid-mediated DNA-transfection procedure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 84 (21): 7413–7417. Bibcode:1987PNAS...84.7413F. doi: 10.1073/pnas.84.21.7413 . PMC   299306 . PMID   2823261.
  5. ↑ Malone, R W; Felgner, P L; Verma, I M (August 1989). "Cationic liposome-mediated RNA transfection". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 86 (16): 6077–6081. Bibcode:1989PNAS...86.6077M. doi: 10.1073/pnas.86.16.6077 . PMC   297778 . PMID   2762315.
  6. ↑ Wolff, Jon A.; Malone, Robert W.; Williams, Phillip; Chong, Wang; Acsadi, Gyula; Jani, Agnes; Felgner, Philip L. (1990-03-23). "Direct Gene Transfer into Mouse Muscle in Vivo". Science. 247 (4949): 1465–1468. Bibcode:1990Sci...247.1465W. doi:10.1126/science.1690918. PMID   1690918.
  7. ↑ Cullis, P. R.; Felgner, P. L. (September 2024). "The 60-year evolution of lipid nanoparticles for nucleic acid delivery". Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 23 (9): 709–722. doi:10.1038/s41573-024-00977-6. ISSN   1474-1784. PMID   38965378.
  8. ↑ Dolgin, Elie (2021-09-14). "The tangled history of mRNA vaccines". Nature. 597 (7876): 318–324. Bibcode:2021Natur.597..318D. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02483-w. PMID   34522017.
  9. ↑ "Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi, and Sarah Gilbert, Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research 2021". Princess of Asturias Foundation. 23 June 2021.
  10. ↑ "LRD 2022: Awards – NMIN – Nanomedicines Innovation Network" . Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  11. ↑ "UCI professor wins prestigious Robert Koch prize | UCI Health | Orange County, CA". www.ucihealth.org. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  12. ↑ "Robert Koch Award". www.robert-koch-stiftung.de. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  13. ↑ "Fellows". NAI. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  14. ↑ taylorrr (2022-12-13). "Phil Felgner named Fellow by National Academy of Inventors". Institute for Immunology. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  15. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  16. ↑ "Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine cites UCI's Philip Felgner – UC Irvine News". news.uci.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-16.


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