Over his 30 years in industry, and through his leadership roles at Pfizer, Richard Korsmeyer has been a driving force behind the strategic development and commercial success of many original pharmaceutical technologies. In his current role at Pfizer, he has been responsible for numerous proprietary drug delivery platforms — from invention to clinical trials.
Richard is particularly known, technologically, for his development (with Nicholas Peppas) of the exponential equation for quantitating controlled drug release from polymeric matrices. That 1983 publication became the most-cited paper ever published by the International Journal of Pharmaceutics.
Early in his career, Richard developed the framework and understanding of swelling controlled release from hydrophilic polymer networks — a body of work that provided the underpinnings for today’s controlled delivery and drug release fields.
More recently, Richard was co-inventor of the commercial drug, Zmax, a sustained delivery product that delivers a full course of the antibiotic, azithromycin, orally, as a single dose.
Richard’s other patents include materials; components; techniques and formulations for drug delivery — such as asymmetric and interfacially polymerized membranes (particularly, semi-permeable membranes for osmotic drug delivery); combination drug dosage forms; and processes for mixing, spraying and imbibing additives. Some of these innovations — such as osmotic drug delivery — have achieved full commercial use, while others are in the human clinicals.
His latest patent involves delivery of bone healing factors for human and veterinary use, and is in advanced human trials. He has also developed anti-allergy compounds and hypotensive compounds for glaucoma and other diseases.
Richard is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Connecticut, and a Fellow of AIChE and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.