Photoactivatable metal complexes: exciting potential in biotechnology and medicine?

• Professor Peter J Sadler FRS, University of Warwick, UK

Biography

Peter Sadler obtained his BA, MA and DPhil in Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Subsequently he was a Medical Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and National Institute for Medical Research. From 1973-96 he was Lecturer, Reader and Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and from 1996-2007 Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. In June 2007 he took up a Chair in Chemistry at the University of Warwick where he was Head of Department from 2007-2010. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and the Royal Society of London (FRS), and a European Research Council Advanced Investigator. His research interests are centred on the chemistry of metals in medicine, including the design of photoactivated transition metal anticancer complexes.

• Dr Nicola J Farrer, University of Warwick, UK

Biography

Nicola Farrer received her degree (Natural Sciences, 2003) and subsequently her PhD (2007) from the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral work involved developing readily ionisable phosphine ligands with a view to detecting catalytic intermediates by electrospray mass spectrometry, and was supervised by Prof. Brian Johnson (University of Cambridge), with the bulk of the analytical work undertaken in the lab of Dr. Scott McIndoe (University of Victoria, Canada). She returned to the UK to join the group of Professor Peter Sadler at the University of Warwick as a post-doctoral fellow in September 2007, working on one- and two-photon photoactivatable metal complexes for application as anti-cancer prodrugs. Her research interests also include multinuclear NMR spectroscopy and chemical applications of photonic crystal fibres. In 2010 she was awarded Chartered Chemist status by the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is currently taking a career break, following the birth of her son James in October 2010.

• Professor Akhil R Chakravarty, Indian Institute of Science, India

Biography

Akhil R Chakravarty received his PhD (1982) from the Calcutta University on a thesis titled “Aspects of the chemistry of ruthenium complexes” under the supervision of Professor Animesh Chakravorty at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta. He later joined Texas A&M University (USA) as a post-doctoral fellow under the supervision of Professor F A Cotton and studied bimetallic complexes having metal-metal multiple bonds. He joined Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, India, in 1985 as an assistant professor and currently is a Professor in the department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.  He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Indian National Science Academy (FNA) and Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (FTWAS). He has received the S S Bhatnagar Award and is a J C Bose national fellow. He has guided 20 PhD students and published 200 research papers in peer reviewed journals. His research interests are primarily focused on the development of the chemistry of metal-based photocytotoxic agents using bio-essential 3d metal ions.

• Professor Peter Ford, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

Biography

Peter Ford joined the UCSB faculty in 1967 after earning a PhD with Kenneth B Wiberg at Yale and serving as a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Henry Taube at Stanford. He has also been Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University (1974), Guest Professor at the University of Copenhagen (1981), an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Researcher in Germany (1992 & 1999 at Regensberg; 2010 at Muenster) and Guest Investigator at the US National Cancer Institute (1994).  He was 2004-06 President of the Inter-American Photochemical Society.  At UCSB, Professor Ford has served as Research Advisor for 60 PhD graduates and numerous BS, MS and postdoctoral students. 

Research interests:

• Photochemistry applications for delivering bioactive molecules to physiological targets.
• Reaction mechanisms of small molecule bioregulators.
• Catalytic conversion of biomass.

Professor Ford has been recognized with a Dreyfus Foundation-Teacher Scholar award, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, an A von Humboldt-Stiftung US Senior Scientist Research Prize, the 1992 Richard C Tolman Medal of the American Chemical Society, election as a Fellow of the AAAS and the 2008 Award in Photochemistry of the InterAmerican Photochemical Society.

• Professor Dr Ulrich Schatzschneider, Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Germany

Biography

Ulrich Schatzschneider studied chemistry at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf and obtained his PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Dr Eva Rentschler and Professor Dr Karl Wieghardt. He spent the next 2 years as a postdoc in the group of Professor Dr Jacqueline K Barton at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, supported by a research fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In 2004, he returned to Germany to start his independent scientific career, first at the University of Heidelberg and from 2006 to 2010 at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum (RUB). He obtained his habilitation in inorganic chemistry from RUB in 2010 and was appointed as Associate Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg in September 2010. His scientific interests are focused on multi-modal bioimaging and therapeutic applications of transition metal complexes and their bioconjugates. In particular, his research group is active in the fields of CO releasing molecules (CORMs) and organometal–peptide bioconjugates.

• Professor Dr Alexander Schiller, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany

Biography

Alexander Schiller studied chemistry at the University of Munich (LMU) and completed his PhD in 2006 under the supervision of Professor K Severin at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). His thesis was focused on biomimetic catalysis with immobilized transition metal complexes. For a postdoctoral stay he moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Together with Professor B Singaram and Dr R Wessling he worked on fluorescent saccharide sensors. At Empa (Switzerland) he held a position as project leader on stimuli-responsive materials. In June 2009 he joined the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena as a junior professor of the Carl-Zeiss foundation (www.jppm.uni-jena.de). His present research interests include immobilised transition metal complexes for NO and CO delivery (www.hhdp.uni-jena.de) and supramolecular analytical chemistry for carbohydrates (www.novosides.eu). Professor Schiller is member of the editorial board of “Reviews in Inorganic Chemistry” (De Gruyter) and holds the presidency of the GDCh Ortsverband Jena.

• Professor Pradip Mascharak, University of California Santa Cruz, USA

Biography

Pradip Mascharak was born in Jaipur, India.  He received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1979.  In the same year, he joined the research group of Professor Richard Holm at Stanford University and later moved to Harvard University.  He also worked with Professor Stephen J Lippard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for two years before joining the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), in late 1984.  He is currently a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSC.  His research focuses on (a) modeling of the active sites of metalloenzymes, (b) design of metal complexes that exhibit oxygenase activity in the presence of peroxides and dioxygen, and (c) syntheses of novel photoactive NO-donors for the treatment of malignancies and infections.  The research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.  Professor Mascharak is an Alfred Sloan Fellow and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

• Professor Chi-Ming Che, University of Hong Kong, P R China

Biography

Professor Chi-Ming Che received his BSc and PhD in 1978 and 1982, respectively, from The University of Hong Kong (HKU). From 1980 to 1983, he studied at the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor Harry B Gray. Thereafter, he returned to his alma mater, where he was promoted to Chair Professor of Chemistry in 1992. Since 1997 he has been the Dr Hui Wai-Haan Chair of Chemistry in HKU. His research interests include inorganic and organic synthesis; metal-ion promoted organic transformations; reactive metal-ligand multiple bonded complexes; inorganic photochemistry; luminescent materials; bioinorganic chemistry; and inorganic medicines. Over 100 PhD students have successfully completed their studies at HKU under his supervision. With more than 700 publications and an H-index of 78, Professor Che is one of the ISI Highly Cited Researchers. He is a current member of the international advisory board of Chemistry-A European Journal, Chemistry-An Asian Journal, Chemical Science, ChemCatChem, ChemPlusChem and Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry.

In 1995 Professor Che was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and became the first CAS member from Hong Kong and the youngest CAS member at that time. He was elected as a Fellow of World Innovation Foundation (2004), a Fellow of Federation of Asian Chemical Societies (2005), a Fellow of TWAS in Chemical Sciences (2007), and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (2009). He received the following awards or prizes: National Natural Science Prize of China (1993), Croucher Senior Fellowship (1997), Chung-Hsing S&T Lectureship (1997), Distinguished Research Achievement Award of the University of Hong Kong (2000), IUF Invited Professorship of France (2000), Federation of Asian Chemical Societies Foundation Lectureship (2003), Visiting Scientist of National Research Council of Italy (2004), Pfizer Signature Lecture (2006), TWAS Prize in Chemistry (2006), 1st Class State Natural Science Award of China (2006), Seaborg Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley (2007), Prize of Ho Leung Ho Lee (HLHL) Foundation for Scientific and Technological Progress (2007), Edward Clark Lee Lectureship at University of Chicago (2008), the Leader of Year 2008 Hong Kong (Research), Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (2008) and Molecular Sciences Forum Lecture Professorship at Institute of Chemistry, CAS (2009).

• Professor John Kelly, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Biography

John Kelly obtained his BSc from the University of Manchester, MSc from McMaster University (supervisor, John McCullough) and PhD from the University of London (supervisor, George Porter).  After a Leverhulme Teaching Fellowship at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica and postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie, Mülheim he joined Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in 1973.  He was elected as Fellow in 1978, promoted to Associate Professor in 1987 and to Professor of Chemistry in 2006.  He was Director of Science of Materials (1989-1973), Head of the Department of Chemistry (1994–2000) and the first Director of the Dublin Chemistry Graduate Programme (2008-2010). He is currently Fellow Emeritus.  His research interests are in photochemistry, transient spectroscopy, nucleic acids, photo-active metal complexes and nanoparticles, with applications in bio-sensing and energy conversion.

• Professor Roberto da Silva, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Biography

Dr Roberto S da Silva joined Pharmacy School of the University of Sao Paulo as Assistant Professor in 1986 where he works nowadays as Professor. He went on to receive his PhD in chemistry at the UNESP-Brazil in 1992, under the mentorship of Professor Elia Tfouni, where he worked on the synthesis and structural elucidation of macrocyclic ruthenium complexes. He undertook post-doctorate research with Professor A B P Lever in 1994, Peter C Ford in 2006 and David Wink in 2009. Dr da Silva’s current research combines the inorganic, bioinorganic, material chemistry and photobiological studies of his undergraduate, graduate and post-doc work to focus on creating nitrosyl ruthenium complexes that will improve the quality and efficiency of photodynamic therapy. His group’s long-term goal is to advance medical and biological research by synthesizing compounds that can deliver on site nitric oxide and singlet oxygen efficiently. His group’s multidisciplinary environment is yielding clinical applications of ruthenium compounds with emphasis on photobiological therapy.

• Dr James Thomas, University of Sheffield, UK

Biography

Jim Thomas was educated at the Universities of Reading and Birmingham. Following postdoctoral work with Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg and Chris Hunter in Sheffield, he stayed in Sheffield to take up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, becoming a permanent member of staff in 2004. He is currently a Reader in Coordination Chemistry. His research involves molecular recognition of anions, molecules and biomolecules, self-assembly, and the construction of functional molecular architectures.

• Professor Kim Dunbar, Texas A & M University, USA

Biography

Professor Dunbar received her PhD in inorganic chemistry from Purdue University in 1984 and carried out postdoctoral research at A&M from 1985-86 under the direction of the late Professor F Albert Cotton.  She joined the A&M faculty in 1999 after serving on the faculty at Michigan State University where she was named a University Distinguished Professor. In 2004, she was named a Davidson Professor of Science and joint holder of the Davidson Chair in Science, meriting particular distinction as the first female chair holder in the College of Science.  Dunbar's research in synthetic and structural inorganic chemistry, funded over the years by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund and the Robert A. Welch Foundation, is focused on the use of coordination chemistry to establish structure/bonding/properties relationships in conducting and magnetic molecular materials and in metal-based drugs.  Her experimental and theoretical work to understand physical and chemical phenomena in several important areas have redirected and focused the work of other researchers all over the world; examples include work in the areas of inorganic/organic hybrid materials, molecular magnets, and dirhodium compounds as anticancer drugs, particularly those that are activated by light.  Major professional honors include an Alfred P Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and Fellowships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemists and the American Chemical Society.  She has been honored with Distinguished Alumna Awards from Purdue University Department of Chemistry in 2004 and from Westminster College in 2000.  She serves her profession as Associate Editor of Inorganic Chemistry and is past Secretary and Chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Inorganic Chemistry.  Recognized as an excellent teacher as well as a researcher, Dr Dunbar received the inaugural Graduate Mentoring Award from The Association of Former Students at Texas A&M University in 2006. She is the author of 310 publications including eighteen reviews or book chapters with an h-index of 50.

• Professor Karen Brewer, Virginia Tech, USA

Biography not yet available.

• Dr Julie Woods, University of Dundee, UK

Biography

Julie Woods is a scientist who received her PhD in Oncology from the University of Manchester in 1994. She is a lecturer at the Photobiology Unit, University of Dundee. Her area of interest is understanding the mechanisms underlying photochemical toxicity. She also has responsibility for the Scottish Cutaneous Porphyria Service. Porphyria is a group of diseases resulting from abnormalities in the biosynthesis of haem and can cause photochemical toxicity due to the excessive accumulation of porphyrin.  She has an active role in the Scottish Photodynamic Therapy Centre, which delivers light-activated drug therapy to both non-melanoma skin cancers and internal cancers. In its first decade, the Photodynamic Therapy Centre has performed 6000 diagnostic and/or therapeutic treatments in the brain, lung, bile duct, oral cavity, urinary tract, gullet and skin.

• Professor Colin Hopper, University College London, UK

Biography not yet available.

• Professor Dr Ulrich Schatzschneider, Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Germany

Biography

Ulrich Schatzschneider studied chemistry at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf and obtained his PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Dr Eva Rentschler and Professor Dr Karl Wieghardt. He spent the next 2 years as a postdoc in the group of Professor Dr Jacqueline K Barton at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, supported by a research fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In 2004, he returned to Germany to start his independent scientific career, first at the University of Heidelberg and from 2006 to 2010 at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum (RUB). He obtained his habilitation in inorganic chemistry from RUB in 2010 and was appointed as Associate Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg in September 2010. His scientific interests are focused on multi-modal bioimaging and therapeutic applications of transition metal complexes and their bioconjugates. In particular, his research group is active in the fields of CO releasing molecules (CORMs) and organometal–peptide bioconjugates.

• Professor Kenneth Kam-Wing Lo, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Biography

Kenneth Lo obtained his PhD degree from The University of Hong Kong in 1997.  From 1997 to 1999, he worked as a Croucher Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford.  He joined the Department of Biology and Chemistry of City University of Hong Kong as Assistant Professor in 1999 and became Associate Professor (Scale B) in 2003, Associate Professor (Scale A) in 2007, and Professor in 2011.  He received The APA Prize for Young Scientist from the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association in 2005 and The Distinguished Lectureship Award from the Chemical Society of Japan in 2011.  The main theme of his research work is the utilization of luminescent transition metal complexes as biomolecular and cellular probes.

• Professor Jean-Claude Bünzli, EPFL, Switzerland and Korea University, Korea

Biography

Jean-Claude Bünzli earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1968 and a PhD in 1971 (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, EPFL). He then spent two years at the University of British Columbia as a teaching postdoctoral fellow (photoelectron spectroscopy) and one year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (physical organic chemistry). He was appointed assistant-professor at the University of Lausanne in 1974 and started a research program on the coordination and spectroscopic properties of f-elements. He was promoted as a full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1980. In 2001 he transferred to EPFL where he founded the Laboratory of Lanthanide Supramolecular Chemistry. Since 2009 he is also acting as World Class University professor at Korea University (South Korea).

His present research interests deal with various aspects of luminescent lanthanide coordination and supramolecular compounds. He is developing luminescent bioprobes and bioconjugates for the detection of cancerous cells with time-resolved microscopy as well as materials for OLEDs, telecommunications, and solar energy conversion. He has published more than 300 papers and is acting as the senior editor of the Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths.

• Professor Dr Volker Albrecht, biolitec research GmbH, Germany

Biography

Volker Albrecht studied medical biochemistry, medicine and food chemistry at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his diploma degree in biochemistry in 1968. After his doctoral thesis in biochemistry in 1972 he worked as research director for several research groups at the Central Institute of Nutrition at the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1984 he was appointed professor of biochemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. In 1989 he was appointed 2nd director at the German Institute of Nutrition responsible for biomedical research. He then switched to industry and from 1992 to 2000 was research director for chemistry, medicine and biology at the development center of Sarstedt AG & Co KG. After working as a research director and scientific consultant for the Strathmann AG & Co and Strathmann Biotech GmbH in 2001 he became research director of the biolitec AG focusing on medical applications of photodynamic therapy. From 2002 to 2004 he also served as managing director of the biolitec Pharma Ltd and since 2011 is managing director of the biolitec research GmbH Jena (Thuringia, Germany) in which all research activities of the biolitec group have been merged.

• Dr Arno Wiehe, biolitec research GmbH, Germany

Biography

Arno Wiehe graduated in chemistry and history at the Free University of Berlin in Germany. During his doctoral thesis in organic chemistry with Professor Dr H Kurreck at the FU Berlin he worked on photosynthetic model systems and received his Dr rer nat in 1997. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Humboldt University in the department of physics in the group of photobiophysics with Professor Dr B Röder. During this time his research focused on tetrapyrrole applications for photodynamic therapy (PDT). In 2001 he joined the biolitec AG as a research scientist. He is now the head of the chemical research laboratory of biolitec developing new photosensitizers for PDT. In 2003/2004, during a part-time study at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Bonn he received an additional qualification as master of drug regulatory affairs and since then has also taken over responsibility in the marketing authorization of photosensitizer drug formulations.