题目：Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications, Nanotoxicology, and Their Ability to Cross the Biological Barriers

时间：2017年6月1日（周四）下午3点半

地点：光电工程学院南区1212会议室
报告人：杨坚泰 教授（新加坡南洋理工大学）
摘要：During the last two decades, nanomaterials have been applied in healthcare applications ranging from cancer imaging to brain diseases therapy. These nanomaterials (e.g. quantum dots, gold nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, nanocarbons, etc.) can be designed to serve as a platform for challenges in highly sensitive optical diagnostic tools, biosensors, and guided imaging and therapy. However, many of these nanomaterials are not even ready for clinical research or trial studies due to limited findings in their pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and toxicity impact in vitro and in vivo. Some nanomaterials have demonstrated the possibility for in vitro studies (e.g. imaging cells, sensing proteins, delivering biomolecules, etc.) but not in vivo studies and this is most likely originated from their inherited toxicity nature. In order to safely employ nanomaterials for biological applications, detail and comprehensive pharmacokinetics and toxicity research need to be carried out. Also, nanomaterials are known to cross biological barriers and cause harmful effects to the body if they are not properly engineered. Thus, it is important to investigate the fundamental criteria for these nanomaterials to bypass biological barriers and subsequently accumulate in the specific organs in the body (e.g. lung, spleen, liver, brain, etc.).

In this talk, we will highlight the use of nanomaterials for biomedical applications (e.g. guided bioimaging, multimodal imaging, sensing, in vivo surgery, gene delivery, etc). We will also discuss how nanomaterials are able to cross the biological barriers, the types of in vitro and in vivo studies to test the biocompatibility the nanomaterials, what methods are available to evaluate the toxicity of the nanomaterials, and the possible mechanisms of toxicity originated from the nanomaterials. Certainly, the in vitro and in vivo toxicity of nanomaterials will be one of the main challenges to be overcome if we would like/want to pursue biophotonic or nanomedicine technologies with namomaterials in clinical research. This talk is intended to promote the awareness of past and present developments of nanomaterials in biomedical fields, the potential toxicity of nanomaterials, and the approaches to engineer safe nanomaterials, whereby encouraging researchers to think about exciting and promising biophotonic and nanomedicine applications with nanomaterials.