Edith Mathiowitz, PhD
Founder, Chairperson
Dr. Edith Mathiowitz founded Spherics in 1997 at Brown University. She is a tenured Professor of Medical Science and Engineering, and the Director of the Artificial Organs, Biomaterials and Cellular Technology graduate program at Brown’s Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology & Biotechnology. She is also the inventor and co-inventor of all of the company’s core patents licensed from Brown University and some of the new technologies developed at Spherics. Before joining Brown University as Assistant Professor, Dr. Mathiowitz worked at Enzytech (now Alkermes) and was one of the developers of the Prolease® drug delivery technology. Her breakthrough work was reported in Nature, March 27, 1997. She serves as an editorial board member for five journals, and was a 2005 co-chair of the Controlled Release Society, an international society dealing with drug delivery. To date, Professor Mathiowitz has over 90 research articles and over 40 issued patents, and edited the book, “An Encyclopedia of Controlled Drug Delivery Systems.”
Dr. Mathiowitz received her PhD in Polymer Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and did her post-doctoral fellowship in drug delivery with Professor Robert Langer at MIT.
Robert Langer, PhD
Institute Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Robert Langer has published extensively in the area of drug delivery and holds over 500 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 100 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies; a number of these companies were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. He served as a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Scientific Advisory Board from 1995 - 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.
Dr. Langer received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his ScD in Chemical Engineering in 1974 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), Hebrew University (Israel), Universite Catholique do Louvain (Belgium) and the University of Liverpool (London).
Thomas McCarthy, PhD
Professor, Polymer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dr. Thomas McCarthy has been at the University of Massachusets since 1982, where he served as the Department Head from 2000 to 2003. His fields of research include polymer surface modification, polymer adsorption, the use of supercritical fluids to modify polymers, covalently attached monolayers and wettability physics. He has 45 former Ph.D students and 15 former postdoctoral fellows who he advised.
Dr. McCarthy received his BS degree in Chemistry at U.Mass, Amherst in 1978 and his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Patrick Sinko, PhD
Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers
Dr. Patrick Sinko is the Parke-Davis Professor of Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers. Dr. Sinko joined the Rutgers faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1991, became Department Chair in 1998and was promoted to Professor in 2000. He is a co-founder of two companies, NaviCyte, Inc. now a subsidiary of LION Bioscience and TheraPort Biosciences. Dr. Sinko is a member of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and the Environmental Occupational Health Safety Institute. He is also a member of the Pharmaceutical Science, Joint Program in Toxicology, and Biomedical Engineering Graduate Programs.
Dr. Sinko has authored or coauthored more than 300 research papers, book chapters and abstracts and he has seven issued patents. He served as a regular member on the Pharmacology (2002-2003) and Xenobiotic and Nutrient Disposition and Action Study Section (2003-2006) of the NIH. Dr. Sinko is the Editor and Principal Author of the Fifth Edition of Martin’s Physical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and serves as a Section Editor for the European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of five journals. Dr. Sinko has received numerous awards including the Hoechst Celanese Innovative Research Award and a NIH MERIT award for AIDS drug delivery-targeting using nanocarriers.
Dr. Sinko received his BS in Pharmacy from Rutgers University in 1982 and his PhD in Pharmaceutics from The University of Michigan in 1988.
