Sam Lai, PhD

Lai is a Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Pharmacoengineering at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy in UNC - Chapel Hill. He directs a dynamic and highly multidisciplinary research program at UNC at the interface of immunology, bioengineering, nanotechnology, drug delivery and mucosal biology. His work has spawn multiple new areas of research, and his inventions have culminated in multiple FDA-approved products as well as active clinical trials. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering and the NSF CAREER Award. Two of his latest startups (Inhalon Biopharma - clinical stage; Mucomune/Elleon - preclinical with clinical proof-of-concept), both launched based on inventions from his lab at UNC, have received in aggregate over $45M in funding and are actively advancing a number of first-in-class therapeutics.