The announcement was made today (3 February 2015) by Lord Browne of Madingley, chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.
Her Majesty The Queen will present the prize to Dr Langer at Buckingham Palace later this year.
Dr Langer is one of 11 Institute Professors at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). His laboratory is the world's largest academic biomedical engineering laboratory.
His work has helped lay the foundation for health innovations, including the brain cancer treatment Giladel Wafer; the prostate cancer and endometriosis treatments Lupron Depot, Zoladex, and Decapeptyl SR; the schizophrenia treatment Respirdal Consta; the diabetes treatment Bydureon; and the drug-coated cardiovascular stents that have benefited 10 million heart patients.
A chemical engineer by training, Dr Langer was the first to engineer polymers to control the delivery of large molecular weight drugs for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and mental illness.
His unconventional thinking toppled the established view that controlled-release drug delivery would not work for large molecules like proteins, which are very sensitive to their surroundings.
"Robert Langer has made an immense contribution to healthcare and to numerous other fields by applying engineering systems thinking to biochemical problems," comments Professor Lord Broers FREng FRS HonFMedSci, chair of judges for the QEPrize.
"Not only has he revolutionised drug delivery, but his open-minded approach to innovation and his ability to think outside the box have led to great advances in the field of tissue engineering," he continues.
"He is a truly inspiring leader who has attracted brilliant people to these relatively new and exciting areas of research and is extremely involved in the commercial development of his group's research."
The QEPrize is a global £1 million prize that celebrates the engineers responsible for a ground-breaking innovation that has been of global benefit to humanity.