Pieter Rutter Cullis is a Canadian physicist and biochemist known for his contributions to the field of lipid nanoparticles (LNP). Lipid nanoparticles are essential to current mRNA vaccines as a delivery system. Prof. Cullis is best known for the development of ionizable cationic lipids. These lipids are able to complex with negatively charged nucleic acids at low pH (≈4.0) where they are positively charged because they have a pKa if approximately 6.4. They reduce or eliminate toxicity associated with cationic lipids at physiological pH of 7.4 because they adopt a net neutral charge. Finally, they enable endosomal escape because they again become positively charged in acidified endosomes and promote formation of non-bilayer structures by interaction with negatively charged lipids. These properties are critical to the function of the mRNA vaccines and are rapidly enabling gene therapy in clinical settings.
Cullis co-founded several companies to develop and commercialize LNP technology including Acuitas Therapeutics, Integrated Nanotherapeutics and Precision NanoSystems.
Research
Cullis received a PhD in physics from the University of British Columbia and then moved to Oxford University to work as a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry working on NMR. During his time at Oxford, he started to work on lipids. In the 1980s, he established his own laboratory at the University of British Columbia and started to create lipid bilayers. He subsequently founded Inex Pharmaceuticals, a company that focused research on ways to encapsulate drugs and nucleic acids within lipid particles. He worked on the development of Patisiran, a drug that uses small interfering RNA delivered via lipid nanoparticles and was FDA approved in 2018. In collaboration with Toshifumi Yokota his research team is also developing LNPs for the treatment of muscular dystrophy.
Awards and honours
1986: Canadian Biochemical Society Ayerst Award
1991: B.C. Science Council Gold Medal for Health Sciences
2000: Alec D. Bangham Award for contributions to liposome science and technology
2002: B.C. Biotechnology Association Award for Innovation and Achievement
2004: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
2005: Barré Prize for contributions to Pharmaceutical Sciences by the University of Montreal 2005: UBC Alumni Award for Research in Science and Medicine 2011: Prix Galien Canada Award 2011: Bill and Marilyn Webber Lifetime Achievement Award 2017: Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors 2021: Controlled Release Society Founders Award 2021: Prince Mahidol Award in Medicine 2022: Officer of the Order of Canada 2022: VinFuture Prize Grand Prize 2022: Camurus Lipid Research Foundation 2021 and 2020 Lipid Science Prize 2022: Canada Gairdner International Award 2022: Governor General's Innovation Award 2022: Celebration of Heroes 2022: Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science 2022: UBC Alumni Award of Distinction 2022: Phospholipid Research Center The Thudichum Life Award 2022: Life Sciences British Columbia Global Impact Award 2022: Bloom Burton Award 2023: Killam Prize for Health Sciences 2023: SCI Canada Awards Julia Levy Award 2023: Fellow of the Royal Society 2023: Sultan Karim Medal of Excellence in Clinical Pharmacology 2023: Member of the Order of British Columbia 2023: Harvey Prize in Science and Technology (awarded for the year 2021) 2023: Bill and Marilyn Webber Lifetime Achievement Award 2023: Canadian Medical Hall of Fame