Title: Photoresponsive nanoparticles for drug delivery

Speaker：Weiping Wang (Associate Professor, Dr Li Dak-Sum Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong)

Time：Sep 30, 2016 (Friday), 10:00-11:00

Location：Room 120, Chemistry Building

Abstract: Light as an external stimulus allows spatiotemporal control over drug release and nanocarrier targeting (phototargeting), and can therefore enhance therapeutic efficacy while decreasing side effects. Here I will mainly present a general strategy to achieve phototargeting based on triplet–triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC), which converts visible light to UV light. We designed photoresponsive polymeric nanoparticles with targeting ligands caged by photocleavable groups. TTA-UC followed by Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) triggered the removal of the photocleavable groups and allowed binding of the nanoparticles to tumors with green light LED irradiation at low irradiance for short periods. The phototargeting can improve the specific targeting of the nanoparticles to tumors over liver and spleen, minimizing off-targeting effect. The long wavelength and low irradiance are attractive features for the potential clinical application of such systems.

Biography:

• Sep 2006–Aug 2011, Ph.D. from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

• Jan 2012–Oct 2016, Research Fellow at Boston Children‘s Hospital, Harvard Medical School (HMS) & Postdoctoral Associate at Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Weiping Wang has been selected as an Assistant Professor at the Dr Li Dak-Sum Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong - Karolinska Institutet Collaboration in Regenerative Medicine. His research interests include molecular engineering, biomaterials, drug delivery and genome editing.