Jindřich Kopeček

Who is Jindřich Kopeček?

Jindřich Kopeček is a polymer chemist and pharmaceutical scientist notable as one of the pioneers in drug delivery. He is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah in Pharmaceutics & Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Bioengineering, and has been an editorial board member of 16 international scientific journals, and a fellow at 13 scientific societies.

Dr. Kopeček has made significant contribution to the developments of biomedical applicable hydrogels and polymeric drug conjugates. He was a member of the research group at Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences where polymeric soft contact lenses was invented. His lab designed and developed N-methacrylamide copolymer-drug conjugates as a lysosomal delivery vehicle to cancer cells. The concept of using poly as polymeric drug carriers has opened a new perspective in modern pharmaceutical science, and developed into the first polymer-drug conjugates entering clinical trials. For these contributions, he was elected as a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2011.