Wed, 12 Jul 2023
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Dr. Ruibing Wang

University of Macau

Supramolecular Cell-Hitchhiking Nanomedicines for Targeted Delivery

Wednesday, July 12, 2023
SSB 7172 @ 3:30 p.m.

Host: Dr. Hogan Yu

 

Abstract

It has been a fantasy that nanomedicine may significantly improve the delivery efficiency of medicine into the targets. The reality is harsh, as numerous clinical data have suggested that only modest improvement was observed. Scientists are searching for better ways of delivering medicine in a more precise manner. Cells are a basic unit of living organisms and using them as drug carriers has unique advantages. For instance, it can significantly improve the targeting efficiency due to the homing effects of selected cells or improve the systemic circulation. There are currently two strategies to construct cell-hitchhiking delivery systems. One is to directly phagocytose drugs (including nano-drugs) via endocytosis, and the other is to use covalent bonds or biological ligand-receptor interactions to conjugate nanomedicine to the surface of live cells. However, the cells that phagocytize medicines may degrade the drug before reaching the target. Covalent binding involves a complex synthetic process on the cell surface, which may impair the physiological function of the carrier cells. The ligand-receptor interaction is often limited to specific cells, and competitive ligand displacement occurs in vivo as well. During the past a couple of years, we have developed several supramolecular approaches to tackle these above-mentioned issues and to enable targeted delivery of various nanomedicines to inflammatory tissues (including solid tumors), driven by the inflammatory tropism of immune cells. We show that these unique systems may significantly improve the delivery efficiency of medicine into the targeted tissues and effectively treat several inflammatory diseases including acute pneumonia and atherosclerosis, and solid tumors such as melanoma.

Introduction of the Speaker

Dr. Ruibing Wang is currently Professor of Supramolecular Pharmaceutics at University of Macau. He obtained his BSc and PhD degrees from Jilin University and Queen’s University, Canada, respectively. He joined University of Macau in 2014. Prof. Wang’s research interest is supramolecular biomaterials, and cell-mimetic and cell-based pharmaceutics. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers on journals such as Nature Comm., Sci. Adv., JACS, Angew, Matter, Adv. Mater., Mater. Today etc, with a total citation of over 8500 times and H-index of 52. He has won several prestigious awards and honors including 2018 Macao Science and Technology Award - Natural Science Award, 2019 UM Teaching Excellence Award, 2020 Macau Science and Technology Award - Technological Invention Award, and 2022 Macau Science and Technology Award – Natural Science Award.  He is a grant examiner for National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), French National Research Agency (ANR), Israel Science Foundation (ISF), Czech Science Foundation (GACR), and National Science Centre of Poland (NCN). In addition, he actively serves as Editorial Board Member of Chinese Chemical Letters, and Supramolecular Materials, and Editorial Advisory Board Member of ACS Applied Bio Materials.