Title: Nanotechnology for innovative cancer therapies

Speaker: Professor Liu Zhuang

Time: 4:00 pm, Dec. 13th, 2016

Venue: Meeting room on the third floor of Building of Chemistry College

About the speaker:

Zhuang Liu *

Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials Laboratory (FUNSOM),

Soochow University Suzhou, Jiangsu , 215123 , China

* zliu@suda.edu.cn

Starting from 2009, our group has been working on the development of functional nanomaterials for applications in biomedical imaging and cancer therapies.  In the first part of this talk, I will introduce our latest efforts on the development of nanotechnology to enhance cancer radiation therapy (RT), one of three mainstream cancer treatment methods used in the clinic. We have uncovered that certain types of inorganic nanomaterials could absorb X-ray, acting as radio-sensitizers to enhance the efficacy of RT. With the help of nanotechnology, we could also modulate the tumor microenvironment (e.g. tumor hypoxia) to optimize RT cancer treatment.  In the second part, I will then discuss our recent studies in the area of nano-immunotherapy. We have tried to combine photothermal therapy with immunotherapy using multifunctional nano-agents. Stimulated by the tumor-associated antigens released after photothermal tumor ablation, the triggered immunological responses in combination with anti-CTLA4 therapy to suppress the activity of regulatory T cells could result in effective inhibition of tumor cells remaining in the body, promising for treatment of cancer metastasis.