Stefan Bossmann selected as senior member of the National Academy of Inventors
Professor and cancer biology chair becomes first KU Medical Center faculty chosen as a senior member
Stefan Bossmann, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, was selected by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) to join the 2025 class of senior members. He is the first senior member from KU Medical Center. The academy recognizes and promotes academic invention.
“I can think of few faculty-inventors more deserving of this recognition than Dr. Bossmann,” said Clifford Michaels, Ph.D., executive director of the KU Center for Technology Commercialization (KUCTC). “In addition to his academic accomplishments, he continues to champion the value of innovation and collaboration across our campuses through his work with our Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI) and KU’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship working group.”
Michaels headed the team who nominated Bossmann, who he said has been an effective partner for KUCTC. “His innovations, whether in the biosensor or drug delivery fields, hold great promise to improve lives,” said Michaels.
Bossmann’s lab at KU Medical Center creates small molecules designed to fight cancer and uses nanotechnology to figure out how to transport these molecules to the site of the tumor, while bypassing healthy tissue. That nanotechnology is what Bossmann calls his “gift wrapping business” — packaging the molecule in a structure that delivers the drugs to a specific target.
"Becoming a senior NAI member means my work as inventor during the last 30 years is being recognized,” Bossmann said. “I am proud to be a Jayhawk. The KU Cancer Center, in conjunction with the Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation, is the ideal environment to quickly translate novel medical technology. Nothing makes me happier than to provide our cancer patients with access to novel liquid biopsies, drug delivery or imaging methods."
Bossmann earned a doctorate in organic synthesis, University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Saarland; a doctorate in nanotechnology, Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg; and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in physical organic chemistry and chemical engineering at Columbia University in New York City.
One of Bossmann’s current projects is working with Tomoo Iwakuma, M.D., Ph.D., at Children’s Mercy to make a molecule that binds to defective p53 proteins. The p53 protein’s job is to stop the formation of tumors. When the protein is mutated, malignant tumors can form.
Other significant work includes developing a blood test that can detect early-stage lung cancer in large populations at-risk for the disease. “Lung cancer is one of these diseases where it makes a big difference when you detect it,” Bossmann said. “Chances of survival are so much higher when you find it at the beginning.”
This year’s class of NAI senior members is the largest to date and hails from 64 NAI member institutions across the nation. Collectively, members of this group are named inventors on more than 1,200 U.S. patents. The senior member induction ceremony at NAI’s 14th annual conference will take place this summer in Atlanta.