Jindrich Henry Kopecek, Ph.D.

Jindřich Henry Kopeček, received his Ph.D. in Macromolecular Chemistry from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry and D.Sc. in Chemistry from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic. His postdoctoral studies were done at the National Research Council of Canada. Before joining the University of Utah in 1986 Kopeček served as Principal Investigator and Laboratory Head in the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. 

He is currently Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics at the University of Utah. He served as President of the Controlled Release Society (1995-1996), Chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry (1999-2004), Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology (2004), and Chair of the Biomaterials and Interfaces Study Section at the National Institutes of Health (2003-2006). 

Prof. Kopeček serves on Editorial Boards of 11 international scientific journals. His awards include the Founders Award of the Controlled Release Society (1999), Millennial Pharmaceutical Scientist Award (2000), Paul Dawson Biotechnology Award (2001), Distinguished International Scientist Award of the Japanese Biomaterials Society (2006), Honorary Professorship, Sichuan University, China (2007), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Journal of Drug Targeting (2011), Doctor of Philosophy Honoris Causa degree from the University of Helsinki, Finland (2014), and T. & A. Higuchi Memorial Lectureship Award, Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Japan (2018). Kopeček is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering (2011) and elected Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (2018).

His research interests are focused on biorecognition of macromolecules, bioconjugate chemistry, drug delivery systems, self-assembled biomaterials, and drug-free macromolecular therapeutics. Hydrogels from his laboratory have been in clinical use and HPMA copolymer - anticancer drug conjugates in clinical trials. Kopeček is a coauthor of more than 460 scientific papers; his Hirsch index is 105 and his publications have been cited 39,881 times (Google Scholar 11/02/2024).

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Research in the Kopeček/Yang Biomedical Polymers Laboratory in the Center for Controlled Chemical Delivery focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of biomedical materials and macromolecular therapeutics. We are studying tailor-made hybrid macromolecules which mimic structures developed by Mother Nature. The interdisciplinary research field involves synthetic and physical chemistry, molecular engineering, pharmaceutics, molecular biology, and immunology. The major projects are described below:

• Combination chemotherapy and immunotherapy of immunosuppressive cancers

• Macromolecular therapeutics for brain delivery and treatment of primary central nervous system lymphoma and traumatic brain injury

• Drug-free macromolecular therapeutics as a B-cell depletion strategy for various diseases

• Crosslinking-mediated endocytosis

• Antibody-drug conjugates
   

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