On the 22nd, the biotechnology corporation Mepsgen, which develops artificial biological tissues (microphysiological systems and MPS) and new drugs, announced that it has newly recruited Professor Choi Nak-won from Korea University College of Medicine as its Chief Scientific Officer (CSO).
Currently serving in the Department of Convergence Medical Science at Korea University, CSO Choi is an expert in microphysiological systems. After graduating from the Department of Applied Chemistry at Seoul National University (now the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering), he obtained his master's and doctoral degrees from Cornell University in the United States. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before serving as a senior and principal researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Brain Science Institute. He has also acted as the Director General of the Brain Convergence Technology Research Group and as the Vice Dean of the KU-KIST Graduate School at Korea University. Among his publications, more than 120 have been published in SCIE-level journals. He received a commendation from the Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT in 2018 for transferring technology to Optogen and Seratgen.
Mepsgen is a biotech company co-founded in August 2019 by Professor Kim Yong-tae from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States and Professor Robert Langer from MIT. The company is developing a system capable of mass-producing microphysiological systems that model the structure and function of human major organ tissues and various types of NANO drug delivery systems with high efficiency and yield.
Kim Yong-tae, the CEO of Mepsgen, noted, "We plan to collaboratively develop various models with domestic and international universities, hospital research institutes, and specialized groups using the automated biological tissue model production system, Promex, together with microphysiological systems expert Professor Choi Nak-won."