Adapted from an article by Karen Woolstrum
Joel S. Greenberger, professor of radiation oncology, has been named a 2024 National Academy of Inventors (NAI) fellow. He is the sixth School of Medicine faculty member to receive this honor since the inaugural class of fellows in 2015.
Peter Wipf, Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, was also named a 2024 NAI fellow.
The NAI fellows program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. Election to NAI fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.
Greenberger, also chair emeritus of the Department of Radiation Oncology, is a pioneer in creating small molecules for preventing and treating radiation exposure damage, either from chemotherapy or exposure from nuclear power plants or weapons. Greenberger is the principal investigator of Pitt’s Center for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation, one of four such centers in the United States. He oversees four projects dealing with the concept of “radiation disease,” which describes categories of organ systems failure related to the time after total body irradiation exposure. His research efforts focus on multiple forms of irradiation-induced cell death, including apoptosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, and secondary injury mediated by release of inflammatory cytokines from irradiated tissues.
The National Institutes of Health has continuously funded Greenberger’s lab for more than 40 years, and his team holds 44 patents and counting. Among the team’s breakthroughs are preclinical models of the use of a lead compound to ameliorate irradiation toxicity in patients with head, neck and esophageal cancer.
“Dr. Greenberger is one of the most inventive researchers I’ve known,” said Bevin Engelward, professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a longtime Greenberger collaborator. “One of the things that stands out in my mind about Dr. Greenberger’s work is that he has not settled on one strategy, but rather he has invented several approaches toward radiation mitigation.”
Engelward pointed specifically to Greenberger’s development of a molecule to treat radiation exposure, called JP4-039.
“Dr. Greenberger has stepwise moved this molecule from concept to application,” Engelward said, pointing to how Greenberger first demonstrated that the molecule could protect against lethal radiation, then developed a way to deliver it to esophageal cells to protect patients undergoing radiation for throat cancer, and created a method to deliver it to the skin via microneedle arrays.
Greenberger has also collaborated with Wipf, whose drug-discovery efforts have ranged across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurodegeneration, fibrosis, neuromuscular diseases, inflammation and immunology. Wipf’s intellectual property has been licensed 31 times and formed the basis for six startup companies. He has pioneered the synthesis of natural compounds that have advanced to clinical trials, including cancer therapeutic Sonolisib, licensed by Oncothyreon (now Seattle Genetics).
Greenberger, Wipf, and the rest of the 2024 class of fellows will be honored and presented medals by a senior official of the United States Patent and Trademark Office at NAI's 14th Annual Conference on June 26, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Graphic by Karen Woolstrum