George Georgiou, a biomedical and chemical engineering professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering, relentlessly searches for problems facing our world with an eye toward creating better solutions. He's made indelible marks on the medical field with new technologies by rethinking the way we treat cancer.
And now, he's a recipient of UT Austin's 2014 Inventor of the Year award presented by the Office of Technology Commercialization. The award recognizes Georgiou, as well as James McGinity in the College of Pharmacy, for commercializing industry-changing technologies, preparing students to follow in their footsteps and proving that What Starts Here Changes the World.
"Dr. Georgiou's contributions to the fundamentals of protein structure have placed him among the leading authorities of the field," said Nicholas Peppas, chair of the Cockrell School's Department of Biomedical Engineering. "Yet, George has been able to translate these results into great products for treatment of our patients. So his work is a great example of scholarly work with impactful outcomes."
In 2013, Nature Biotechnology named Georgiou one of the world’s top 20 translational researchers, and his far-reaching body of work backs up that honor.
His inventions account for 15 distinct technologies, and more than half of his 75 issued and pending patents have been licensed or optioned. By comparison, only about 5 percent of patent applications from academic institutions are licensed.
“Dr. Georgiou is one of the most prolific and innovative researchers at UT Austin, and a world-renowned pioneer in the fields of protein engineering and therapeutics,” said Thomas Truskett, chair of the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering. “He’s developed groundbreaking health care-related technologies that are helping treat diseases and improving people’s quality of life — the impact of his work is truly remarkable.”
After working with an antibody being developed for the treatment and prophylaxis of inhalational anthrax disease, Georgiou co-founded Aeglea Biotherapeutics with Stone to pursue clinical evaluation of protein therapeutics he discovered at the university.
“The main advantage of protein therapeutics,” Georgiou says, “is they are very precise in the way they act to treat a disease. As opposed to chemotherapeutic agents and other small molecule drugs that are usually taken orally and are more likely to have a number of side effects, because their mode of action is much broader.”
Georgiou creates those protein therapeutics to target specific amino acids, taking advantage of a cancerous cell’s metabolic vulnerability and, in turn, selectively killing only the tumor.
“We take human enzymes and re-design them so that they can destroy the metabolite the cancer cells need,” Georgiou explains. “Then we inject them into the patient, and the enzyme circulates in the blood. It destroys the metabolite, and then the patient is depleted from that particular metabolite. The cancer cells cannot grow, but the normal cells are unaffected.”
Georgiou’s students and colleagues agree he’s one of the busiest people on campus, but he always finds the time and energy to offer guidance and keep projects on track. That persona, say those who know him well, drives other industry and academic leaders to want to collaborate with Georgiou.
“Whenever he’s looking at taking on a new project, he does this check to see if it’s worthwhile and if somebody would want to use it,” says Brandon DeKosky, one of Georgiou’s graduate research assistants. “That’s the driving force behind why so much of his work gets out there — he makes sure whatever he’s working on is going to be useful.”
Georgiou, who is among the “Top 100 Eminent Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era,” according to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, arrived on the Forty Acres in 1987 as an assistant professor of chemical engineering, and he’s spent his entire career here. Universities, Georgiou says, are the best “engines of innovation,” where ideas that impact our society are first developed.
“I think of problems where I can have an impact,” Georgiou says. “The motivation is not really to be considered an inventor. The motivation is primarily to be able to do something that is meaningful.”
