Professor Volkmar Weissig

Volkmar Weissig, DSc, Ph.D., FWTN is Tenured Full Professor of Pharmacology and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. He is Professor of Biomedical Sciences, College of Graduate Studies, and the Co-Director of the Nanomedicine Center of Excellence in Translational Cancer Research.

Volkmar has conducted pioneering research in the field of non-viral vector development for mitochondrial gene therapy.

He is the principal inventor and chairman of the scientific advisory board of MitoVec, a company that develops therapies for cancer and other diseases using drug delivery technology to target mitochondria.

Before joining the faculty at Midwestern University, Volkmar was an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Volkmar holds 16 patents and has published 98 research papers, review articles, and book chapters, mostly in the area of nano drug delivery systems. He also edited and published 8 books. He serves as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Liposome Research and is member of several other Editorial Boards.

In July 2009, he was inducted into the World Technology Network as a Fellow. In October 2014, Volkmar was elected President of the World Mitochondria Society.

Volkmar earned his Bachelor’s degree of Science, Master’s degree of Science, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the College of Advanced Technology in Leuna-Merseburg, Germany. He earned his postdoctoral DSc (Doctor of Science) degree in Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from the Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

From 1982 to 1992, he served as an assistant professor of chemistry, and from 1992 until 1994, as an associate professor of biochemistry at the University in Halle, Germany.

Combined he completed several years of postdoctoral fellowships at the Cardiology Research Center in Moscow, Russia, at the Academic Department of Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London, UK, at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Czechoslovak Academy of Science in Prague (CSFR), at the College of Pharmacy and the College of Medicine at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, and at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

He is coeditor of Mitochondrial Medicine – Probing Mitochondrial Function Vol 1 and Mitochondrial Medicine – Volume 2 – Manipulating Mitochondrial Function edited by him and Marvin Edeas. With Gerard G.M. D’Souza he coauthored Organelle-Specific Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, and with Aleš Prokop, he coedited Intracellular Delivery III: Market Entry Barriers of Nanomedicines (Fundamental Biomedical Technologies Book 8) .

Some of Volkmar’s most read research publications are:

• Treatment Strategies that Enhance the Efficacy and Selectivity of Mitochondria-Targeted Anticancer Agents.
• Mitochondrial Delivery of Biologically Active Molecules
• Targeting Mitochondria: Strategies, Innovations and Challenges: The future of medicine will come through Mitochondria.
• Organelle-Targeted Nanocarriers: Specific Delivery of Liposomal Ceramide to Mitochondria Enhances Its Cytotoxicity in Vitro and in Vivo
• Mitochondria-specific nanotechnology
• Liposomes and Liposome-like Vesicles for Drug and DNA Delivery to Mitochondria
• Liposomes – A Practical Approach, 2nd Edition, Vladimir P. Torchilin, Volkmar Weissig (Eds), Oxford University Press, 396 pages (2003)
• DQAsomes: A novel potential drug and gene delivery system made from Dequalinium (TM)

Read the news about his startup company MitoVec from 2004.

Read the news about some of his latest research in Killing bacteria by silencing genes may be alternative to antibiotics published as Cationic amphiphilic bolaamphiphile-based delivery of antisense oligonucleotides provides a potentially microbiome sparing treatment for C. difficile in The Journal of Antibiotics.

Read about Mitochondria-specific nanotechnology in Future Medicine.

Watch his video talk from Conference Series about his discoveries and watch his short video testimonial at 8th International Conference and Exhibition on Pharmaceutics & Novel Drug Delivery Systems.

Visit his LinkedIn profile and his ResearchGate page. Follow him on Facebook and view his Google Scholar profile.