Chemical Biology; Molecular Probe & Biomedical Imaging; Bio-labeling, Synthetic Bioorganic Chemistry; Pharmaceutical & Food Chemsitry; and Nano-theranostics
Introduction
Our
research interests are highly interdisciplinary at the
interfaces of Chemical Biology, Fluorescent Imaging Probe Design, Bio-labeling, Nano-medicines,
Pharmaceutical
Chemistry as well as Food Analysis.
Specific aims of ours are
to integrate the knowledge of synthesis chemistry, chemical
biology and optical imaging sensing techniques to design,
develop
and
identify the "smart" small molecules, natural products, drug active
peptides
and/or their
analogues to solve biological and medicinal problems. We are
also
interested in development of new functional nanomaterial hybrids as chemical biology tools for
biosensing, imaging, enzyme
detection, biocatalysis, drug/gene delivery or potential clinical
diagnosis.
(a) Biomedical
Fluorescent Imaging / Chemcial Biology / Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Development
of novel and "smart" small
molecule imaging
probes (including
design and preparation
of small organic or polypeptide fluorophores, "photocaged or
photoactive"
systems, fluorescent
labeled glycopeptides, nucleotides and/or fluorescent
nanoparticles or
functional oligo/polymers etc)
for specific labeling of diseases related proteins on cell memebrane or
inside cellular organelles, real-time
imaging of the medical functions of bioactive molecules, screening of
drug
inhibitors or
monitoring of drug reaction processes in living
systems.
(b) Nano-bio technology
/ Nano-theranostics
Development
of "smart" - sitimulus - respsonsive peptide or lipid
conjugated metallic nanoparticles, semiconductor quantum
dots,
NIR light-mediated photoactive functional nanomaterials for
tumor/bacterial localized sensing, targeted
drug/nucleic acids delivery, molecular
imaging and precision biomedicine.
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