Joseph DeSimone. Photo by Dan Sears; ©2008 Endeavors.
An Oscar for Inventors
by Mark Derewicz
(filed under: people)
You can do all the innovating you want in the laboratory,” says Joseph DeSimone, “but if you can’t get it outside of the university walls you do no one any good.”
For eighteen years, ever since joining Carolina’s chemistry department as a twenty-five-year-old assistant professor, DeSimone’s driving goal has been to get his inventions in green manufacturing and medicine out of his lab and into the world. He has more than 115 patents and 70 more pending. He founded two companies and licensed his innovations to leading manufacturers. For all this he was awarded the 2008 Lemelson-MIT prize, a $500,000 award that has been dubbed “the Oscar for inventors.” The prize recognizes scientists who turn their ideas into inventions and innovations that change the world we live in and improve life for all of us.
DeSimone has a long list of innovations, from a polymer-based stent to a better way to make Teflon. But his newest invention might have the greatest impact of all.
The PRINT technology, or Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates, can create nanoparticles that carry medicine to specific parts of the body. For instance, nanocarriers can be designed to take medicine directly to a tumor to attack cancer cells without harming healthy cells. The technology may lead to better treatments for cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, diabetes, and muscular sclerosis. It could also aid the development of vaccines.
“It just opens up all these different approaches for disease treatment because we can control the size, shape, and chemistry of these particles in a very effective and sort of systems-engineering manner,” DeSimone says.
Before PRINT, DeSimone’s most notable invention was an environmentally friendly manufacturing process that relies on supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of water and detergent to make high-performance plastics such as Teflon. The current detergent used to make Teflon in water is a persistent organic pollutant and has been banned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Many plastics manufacturing processes use water, and it takes an immense amount of energy to dry the plastics. DeSimone’s manufacturing process uses 20 percent less energy than standard practice and reuses CO2 while creating the same Teflon and other fluoropolymers that are used in wire and cable jackets and insulation, flexible tubing, and industrial films. DuPont licensed DeSimone’s breakthrough process and has built commercial plants based on the technology, leading to unique products and more environmentally sustainable manufacturing, says Nandan Rao, Global Technology Director of DuPont Fluoroproducts.
“His ideas,” Rao says, “are truly revolutionary and represent dramatic departures from what others have pursued.”
Joseph DeSimone is the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at UNC and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemical Engineering at NC State.
