Porphysome Nanotechnology: Discovery, clinical translation and beyond
Gang Zheng
Professor
Department of Medical Biophysics
University of Toronto
November 17, 2016
3:00 p.m.
QNC 1501
Abstract: Porphyrins are aromatic, organic, light-absorbing molecules that occur abundantly in nature, especially in the form of molecular self-assemblies. In 2011, we first discovered ‘porphysomes’, the self-assembled porphyrin-lipid nanoparticles with intrinsic multimodal photonic properties (Nature Materials 2011). The high-density porphyrin packing in bilayers enables the absorption and conversion of light energy to heat with extremely high efficiency, making them ideal candidates for photothermal therapy and photoacoustic imaging. Upon nanostructure dissociation, fluorescence and photodynamic activity of porphyrin monomers are restored. In addition, metal ions can be directly incorporated into the porphyrin building blocks of the preformed porphysomes thus unlocking their potential for PET and MRI. By changing the way porphyrin-lipid assembles, we developed HDL-like porphyrin nanoparticles (