10:15 a.m., Nov. 21, 2008----Abraham Lenhoff, Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware, has been selected to receive the 2009 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Separations Science and Technology.

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The award, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in fundamental or applied research directed to these areas, will be presented at the society's spring 2009 national meeting and exposition.

Lenhoff's work in this area focuses on separation of proteins, which has applications in the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. Proteins form the basis for therapies to treat a wide range of diseases, including cancer, diabetes and anemia. The fundamental research done by Lenhoff and his research group is used by companies in developing and improving the commercial processes used to produce these drugs.

“Separation processes are crucial to protein production using modern genetic engineering technology,” Lenhoff says. “It's only been within the past 30 years that the technology has grown to the point where particular proteins can be synthesized for therapeutic uses. A good example is insulin, which was previously recovered from slaughterhouses but can now be made synthetically.”

Lenhoff's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and NASA. He is currently principal investigator of a five-year, $10.4 million grant from NIH to study membrane protein production and characterization.

Lenhoff earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He joined the UD faculty in 1984 and was named Gore Professor in 2002.

Article by Diane Kukich