Janos Szebeni

Janos Szebeni is a medical researcher, immunologist, and author. His research work has centered on the adverse immune effects of nanomedicines, particularly liposomes and lipid nanoparticles. He was among the early contributors to the development of liposome-encapsulated hemoglobin, a universal blood substitute,

Szebeni directs the Nanomedicine Research and Education Center within the Department of Translational Medicine at Semmelweis University. He is also the co-founder and CEO of SeroScience.

Career Szebeni began his career as a research associate at the Hungarian National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion in Budapest, Hungary, from 1978 to 1983, followed by a position as research scientist at the National Institute of Food Hygiene and Nutrition between 1983 and 1985. In 1986 and 1987, he held research fellowships at Christchurch Medical School, ETH-Zentrum; and at the University of Arizona. From 1987 to 1991, he held the appointment of visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute. From 1993, he was working at the Department of Membrane Biochemistry, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research as a Senior NRC fellow, where he was promoted in 1998 as a section chief at the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP). There, he was promoted to full professor in 2020. He also participated in 7 EU "FP7" and "H2020 programs and as PI and Project Coordinator in a Horizon Spinning program. These studies explored the interactions between membrane lipids and hemoglobin, revealing an essential role of membrane cholesterol in protecting hemoglobin from degradation through heme partition into the bilayer, and the complement-activating effect of LEH. He and his colleagues proposed that complement activation could play a causal role in many hypersensitivity reactions and anaphylaxis observed after injection of liposomal drugs in animals and humans. allergomedins (mast cell- and basophil-secreted allergy-triggering proteins), and CIPA (Complement-Independent Pseudo-Allergy). He, along with his colleagues, developed the porcine model of CARPA. He emphasized that the binding between PEGylated liposomes and anti-PEG IgM causes complement activation, resulting in blood clearance and anaphylactoid shock of liposome-IgM complexes, and documented that complement activation contributes to the severe HSRs caused by PEGylated nanomedicines and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the carriers of mRNA in the widely used COVID-19 vaccines, Comirnaty and Spikevax. AIDS combination chemotherapy using dipyridamole, bone marrow transplantation and graft-versus-host disease. He was the lead author in the research study of the unusual compliance of Comirnaty lipoplexes and hydrogen bonding between mRNA and ionizable lipids. He is a coeditor of the books, The Complement System: Novel Roles in Health and Disease and the Immune Aspects of Biopharmaceuticals and Nanomedicines.

Awards and honors 2019 – Honorary Citizen of the University of Miskolc 2024 – Szent-Gyorgyi Albert Medical Award, Ministry of Education