報告題目：Biologically-Responsive MRI Agents
報 告 人：Andrew Whittaker教授
報告時間：2018年9月30日（周日）上午10:00
報告地點：化學樓二樓一號會議室
邀 請 人：吳鈺周教授
報告人簡介：
Andrew Whittaker has established an international reputation in three fields; 1) magnetic resonance of materials, 2) polymeric biomaterials and 3) polymers for photolithography. In the field of NMR and MRI of materials he has performed important research on the structure of inorganic and organic materials; in the field of biomaterials he has made advances to our understanding of transport in biomaterials, and the design of novel imaging agents; in the field of lithography his work continues to inform the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. Whittaker leads a group of ~40 researchers investigating the application of advanced polymer chemistry to important technological questions. His work is heavily funded by national funding agencies and industry. In particular he has attracted substantial funding from national and international companies, including Dow, Intel, Sematech, Eli Lilly, etc. He has won numerous awards, including in 2011 an ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship, and in 2015 the Chinese Academy of Sciences Presidents International Fellowship.
報告摘要：
Recently there has been intense interest in the development of fluorinated molecules to allow tracking of therapeutic particles and cells in vivo. The motivation for this is the very high selectivity of the 19F imaging experiment, since unlike in 1H MRI, the body does not contain a confounding fluorine background signal. In principle therefore, highly-selective 19F images can be superimposed on high-resolution anatomical 1H images, allowing tracking of suitably-labelled cells or biomarker molecules. Here I describe the motivation for the development of new partly-fluorinated copolymers with outstanding potential as 19F MRI imaging agents, and in particular as agents sensitive to the biological environment. The discussion will focus on partly-fluorinated macromolecules incorporating the monomer OEGMA which respond to external stimuli, for example local temperature, pH or ionic strength. I will also describe our programs in imaging and delivery to small animal models of glioma, the use of these molecules for tracking of therapeutic stem cells, and our investigations of mechanisms of cell uptake of nanoparticles.
