Bio
B.S. SUNY Stony Brook 1976Ph.D. SUNY Buffalo, 1982Post-Doc Research Instructor, Department of Biochemistry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 1984-1986Post-Doc Research Associate, Department of Biological Chemistry, The University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 1982-1984"Developed innovative nanotechnologies for targeted drug delivery in cancer and cardiovascular diseases; pioneered the use of sphingolipids as therapeutics."
Mark Kester, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Pharmacology, Molecular Physiology/Biophysics
Mark Kester is a Professor of Pharmacology and the Director of the NanoSTAR Institute of the University of Virginia. He was previosuly the G. Thomas Passananti Professor of Pharmacology at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine and the inagural Director of the Penn State Center for NanoMedicine and Materials. Dr. Kester’s research interests include the design, characterization and validation of nanotechnologies for targeted drug delivery. His laboratory has evaluated nanoliposomes, nanodendrimers and nanocolloids as effective drug delivery vehicles for pharmacological and molecular agents. Recent work focuses on nontoxic nanoscale systemic delivery systems for hydrophobic pro-apoptotic lipids as well as siRNAs that target mutated tumorigenic proteins. Dr. Kester has consulted with, or founded, several companies that have the license to his nano”Solutions”. In addition, Dr.Kester is a co-author of Integrated Pharmacology, published by Elsevier, Ltd., which was recognized as a "highly commended textbook" by the British Medical Society.