Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey


Professor Joachim Kohn is the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University. He has served as Director of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials since its establishment in 1997. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBSE). He is the principal investigator of several leading federally-funded R&D programs: NIH-funded postdoctoral training program in Tissue Engineering, NSF-funded Partnership for Innovation designed to explore new plant-synthetic hybrid biomaterials, NIH funded National Resource for Polymeric Biomaterials (RESBIO), and the DoD-funded Center for Military Biomaterials Research (CeMBR) and Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM).

Professor Kohn's research interests focus on the development of new biomaterials. He pioneered the use of combinatorial and computational methods for the optimization of biomaterials for specific medical applications. He is mostly known for his seminal work on "pseudo-poly(amino acid)s" – a new class of polymers that combine the non-toxicity of individual amino acids with the strength and process ability of high-quality engineering plastics. The most prominent member of this class of polymers is poly(DTE carbonate), a tyrosine-derived polycarbonate for which a Materials Master file has been submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in anticipation of the routine clinical use of this material in several medical implants. He has published over 200 scientific manuscripts and reviews and holds 35 patents.

Since 1993, Professor Kohn has received over $25 Million in research support from US government agencies, the New Jersey state government, and private corporations and foundations. To assist in the development of new therapies that can help patients in need of new tissues, he has gained extensive technology transfer experience. He is the scientific founder of two spin-off companies, and served on the Life Science Advisory Board of the CIT Group and as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of ConexusCapital. As Director of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, Professor Kohn initiated the Center's industrial membership program that has currently 20 member companies. He currently serves on the scientific advisory boards of three companies.

In 2007, Professor Kohn was inducted into the New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame.  He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award for best patent in New Jersey in the category of medical research, once in 1999 for his invention of tyrosine-derived polycarbonates, and once in 2006 for his invention of the first combinatorially designed library of polyarylates.  His other awards include the 2003 Clemson Award for Basic Science of the Society for Biomaterials, a 1997 Special Opportunity Award of the Whitaker Foundation, a 1993 Hoechst-Celanese Innovative Research Award, a 1992 Young Investigator Research Achievement Award of the Controlled Release Society, a 1992 Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence at Rutgers University, and a 1990 NIH Research Career Development Award. 

Dr. Kohn has served as board member on several prestigious scientific journals, such as "Biomaterials", "Journal of Biomedical Materials Research", "Journal of Applied Biomaterials", "Journal of Biomaterials Science - Polymer Edition", and "American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Pharmaceutical Science".

Selected Publications:

• Sheihet, L., K. Piotrowska, R. Dubin, J. Kohn, D. Devore, Effect of tyrosine-derived triblock copolymer compositions on nanosphere self-assembly and drug delivery. Biomacromolecules, 2007. 8(3): p. 998-1003.

• Smith, J.R., A. Seyda, N. Weber, D. Knight, S. Abramson, and J. Kohn, Integration of combinatorial synthesis, rapid screening, and computational modeling in biomaterials development. Macromol. Rapid Commun., 2004. 25: p. 127-140.

• Ryan, P.L., R.A. Foty, J. Kohn, and M. Steinberg, Tissue spreading on implantable substrates is a competitive outcome of cell-cell vs. cell-substratum adhesivity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2001. 98(8): p. 4323-4327.

• Brocchini, S. K. James, V. Tangpasuthadol and J. Kohn, Structure-property correlations in a combinatorial library of degradable biomaterials, J. Biomed. Mater. Res., 1998, 42, 66-75.

• Brocchini, S., K. James, V. Tangpasuthadol, and J. Kohn, A combinatorial approach for polymer design. J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 1997. 119(19): p. 4553-4554.

• Ertel, S.I. and J. Kohn, Evaluation of a series of tyrosine-derived polycarbonates for biomaterial applications. J. Biomed. Mater. Res., 1994. 28: p. 919-930.