Professor Hyung Joon Cha received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1995. From 1996 to 1998, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in the USA, and an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 1998 to 1999. He joined POSTECH in 1999.

His areas of interest include biomolecule-based biomaterials, tissue and biomedical engineering, drug delivery systems, and biosensors. He has published ~300 peer-reviewed research papers and holds more than 100 registered patents.

Currently, he serves as the Dean of Engineering at POSTECH, as well as the Director of the Biomaterials Research Institute (formerly, the Marine BioMaterials Research Center), which is funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea, in recognition of his prominent work on mussel-derived adhesive biomaterials for biomedical and healthcare applications. He is also the co-founder and co-CEO/CTO of Nature Gluetech Co., Ltd, for the technology commercialization of mussel adhesive protein as an innovative medical bioadhesive.

His work has been recognized by numerous awards, including Korea Toray Science and Technology Prize, Order of Service Merit (Red Stripes), the Korea Engineering Award presented by the Korean President, the Inventor of the Year Award, the 2020 Future 100 Best Technologies and Researchers Award, the 2023 National R&D 100 Best Researcher Award, and the Song-Gok Science and Technology Award.

He is currently a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST), a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK), and the President of the Korea Marine Biotechnology Industry Organization (K-MarineBIO).

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Plenary Details

Sunday 28 June

Synthetic Adhesive Biomolecule-Based Innovative Localized Drug Delivery Therapeutics to Minimize Systemic Toxicity

In cancer therapy, nanoparticles (NPs) have been developed as therapeutic delivery systems capable of achieving efficient cellular uptake, targeting, and controlled release to enhance the pharmacological activity of various therapeutic molecules. However, systemic approaches of NPs have not yielded significant clinical outcomes due to insufficient accumulation, rapid clearance, and systemic toxicity. Even though local treatment can offer precise distribution of NPs in cancer, harsh microenvironments, including the flow of body fluids and diverse clearance mechanisms, have been major challenges in the effective absorption and bioavailability of therapeutics. In this presentation, I will introduce several types of protein-based stimuli-responsive and adhesive therapeutics based on bioengineered synthetic mussel adhesive proteins (MAPs) for localized cancer therapy to provide a prolonged residence time of NPs on wet/mucosal tissue surfaces and facilitate the controlled release of therapeutic agents with desirable pharmacokinetics, thereby enabling highly effective therapeutic responses with excellent biosafety.