Speaker   Ling Peng（Centre Interdisciplinaire de Nanoscience de Marseille, Aix-Marseille University）
Title         Drug discovery and drug delivery in cancer therapy
Time        July 27th, 10:00-11:30
Venue      F 101
Host         Prof. Yun-Dong Wu

ABSTRACT:

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world and remains a difficult disease to treat. Nucleoside drugs constitute an important class of anticancer therapeutics.1 We have been actively engaged in establishing novel triazole nucleoside analogues as anticancer candidates using modern green chemistry. In particular, mixed-ligand Pd catalytic systems showed superior performance in constructing these nucleoside analogues.2 Most importantly, various lead compounds have excellent potency against drug-resistant cancer forms yet with completely new modes of action such as targeting heat shock response pathway, inducing autophagy and eliciting immunomodulation effect.3 To further improve the anticancer drug bioavailability, we have developed innovative and adaptive nanocarriers for targeted drug delivery. These nanocarriers are constructed with self-assembling amphiphilic dendrimers which are able to generate adaptive supramolecular nanostructures4 and encapsulate anticancer molecules with high loading efficiency for effective anticancer activity to combat drug resistance yet with considerably reduced adverse effect,5 opening new perspectives in supramolecular chemistry based dendrimer nanotechnology in biomedical applications.

SHORT BIO:

Dr. Ling Peng is a research director at the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS), and a group leader at the Interdisciplinary Center on Nanoscience in Marseille (CINaM) in France. She carried her undergraduate study in polymer chemistry with Prof. Chen Rongshi at Nanjing University in China, her Ph.D program in organic chemistry with Prof. Albert Eschenmoser at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland, and her postdoctoral research with Prof. Maurice Goeldner in Pharmacy at Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg in France. She was recruited as a research scientist in CNRS in 1997, and promoted as a CNRS research director in 2008. Currently, she is working actively in developing multifunctional dendrimers as intelligent nanomaterials for drug and gene delivery, molecular probes for exploring biological events and drug discovery. One of the dendrimers developed was scheduled in clinical trials in USA and UK. Dr. Ling Peng has been actively involved in the European projects such as COST Actions of “Biological Applications of Dendrimers” and “Targeting Drug Resistance of Cancer Stem Cells”, and coordination of the DENANORNA project under the frame of EU FP7 “EuroNanoMed” program. She has co-authored more than 100 scientific papers, 5 patents and 14 book chapters. Dr. Ling Peng is the member of Editorial Advisory Board of Molecular Pharmaceutics, section editor for drug delivery of Current Medicinal Chemistry and assistant editor of New Journal of Chemistry.