Nanomedicine Researcher Inducted Into St. Louis Academy of Science

Katti joins one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious association's for scientists and engineers

Kattesh Katti, PhD, Curators' Distinguished Professor of Radiology and Physics at the University of Missouri, has been named a Fellow of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. He joins an exclusive group of fewer than 200 scientists and engineers who have attained Fellow status in the past 156 years.

Academy Fellows receive the designation by virtue of election into The National Academies or receipt of one of the Academy of Science of St. Louis' Outstanding St. Louis Scientist Awards. Katti received the award in 2007.

Kattesh Katti, PhD

In 2005, Katti received a prostate cancer research grant that distinguished MU as one of 12 universities to participate in the National Cancer Institute's Nanotechnology Platform Partnership. The grant established MU as a leader in advancing nanomedicine by uniting a variety of biomedical research resources across campus. With scientists at the MU Research Reactor (MURR), the most powerful university reactor in the country, Katti and his colleagues have developed cancer specific therapeutic radioactive gold nanoparticles. MURR is one of only a few sites worldwide able to produce cancer targeting gold nanoparticles. Katti and his colleagues have developed a library of more than 85 engineered nanoparticles for use in molecular imaging and therapy and have developed a promising prostate cancer treatment that uses gold nanoparticles.

Katti received his doctorate degree in in 1984 from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. In 1985, he was awarded a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany to work at the University of Gottingen in Germany. He is a Margaret Proctor Mulligan Distinguished Professor in Medical Research, and in 2011, he received the University of Missouri System President's Award, which honors excellence in teaching, research, service and economic development. Katti is a past recipient of the Missouri House of Representatives' Outstanding Missourian Award. He has won several international awards in recognition of his pioneering research in green nanotechnology and is the founding and executive editor of the International Journal of Green Nanotechnology. In 2010, Katti and his colleagues formed a partnership with an international pharmaceutical firm to advance testing of a potential cancer treatment they created at MU.

"I saw the makings of a great scientist in Dr. Katti during his tenure as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in Göttingen, Germany, almost 25 years ago in my laboratories," said Herbert Roesky, PhD, a world-renowned professor at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen in Germany. "His seminal work in main group and transition metal chemistry has surely culminated into his groundbreaking work on various applied aspects of nanotechnology, especially in biomedicine."

"We are very proud of Dr. Kattesh Katti's academic achievement," said Puspendu Kumar Das, PhD, Amrut Mody Professor in Chemical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. "His induction into the Academy of Science of St. Louis is richly deserved as this recognizes his sustained scientific contributions at the highest level for almost three decades. I congratulate him on my behalf and on behalf of our Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India."

Click here to download a high-resolution portrait of Katti.