Photoactivatable metal complexes: from theory to therapy

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

Biography

Peter Sadler obtained his BA, MA and DPhil at the University of Oxford. From 1971-73 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. 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, especially the design of photoactivated metal anticancer complexes.

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

Biography

Akhil R Chakravarty received his PhD in 1982 from the Calcutta University under the supervision of Prof. Animesh Chakravorty. He later joined Texas A&M University (USA) as a post-doctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. 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-compatible 3d metal ions.

• 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 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 Robin Perutz FRS, University of York, UK

Biography

After undergraduate study at Cambridge, Robin Perutz investigated the structure of metal carbonyl fragments for his PhD under J. J. Turner for his PhD. In that period in Cambridge and Newcastle, he established the existence of one of the first sigma-complexes, Cr(CO)₅(CH₄), and the first metal-Xe bond, Cr(CO)₅Xe, by photochemical matrix isolation. After periods in Mülheim, Edinburgh and Oxford, he moved to York in 1983. Along the route, he broadened his interests to encompass many aspects of the reaction mechanisms, photochemistry, spectroscopy and synthesis of organo-transition metal and metal hydride complexes. His recent work includes C-F bond activation, halogen bonding and  supramolecular photochemistry for solar energy conversion. He was awarded the Sacconi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society in 2008 and the Franco-British Medal of the French Chemical Society in 2009. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy, in 2010.

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

Biography 

Professor Peter Ford joined the University of California, Santa Barbara faculty after earning his Ph.D. with Ken Wiberg at Yale and serving as a postdoctoral fellow with Henry Taube at Stanford. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National U., a Guest Professor at the U. Copenhagen, an Alexander von Humboldt US Senior Scientist at U. Regensberg and U. Muenster, and Guest Investigator at the US National Cancer Institute.  Honors include the 2008 Award in Photochemistry of the Inter-American Photochemical Society.  At UCSB, Professor Ford has served as Research Advisor for 61 Ph.D. graduates and numerous B.S., M.S. and postdoctoral students. His current research is focused on applications of photochemistry for NO and CO delivery to physiological targets, fundamental mechanisms of small molecule bioregulators, and catalytic conversions of biomass to chemicals and fuels.

• Professor Michael George, University of Nottingham, UK

Biography to follow. 

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

Biography 

Professor Chi-Ming Che received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. 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 Ph.D. students have successfully completed their studies at HKU under his supervision. With more than 700 publications and an H-index of 79, 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 Prof. 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 Roberto Etchenique, University of Buenos Aires

I am a Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I work on chemical tools that can be applied to biological research. Since 2003 we have developed a new family of caged compounds based on the photochemistry of Ruthenium-polipyridine chemistry. The heterolytic cleavage obtained  through irradiation onto the Ruthenium complexes allow us to deliver entire molecules without any side reactions. Moreover, the band structure of ruthenium-bipyridine complex permits the utilization of mild visible light instead of the more deletereous UV light needed for other caged compounds.

In the last years (2010-2011) we began to extend this approach in new directions. We have worked on photoactivated surfaces that promote cell adhesion and in new antenna-fluorophore ligands to devise phototriggers with high absorption cross-section at long wavelengths capable to deliver chemicals in a biologically friendly environment. 

• Professor David Phillips, Imperial College London, UK

Biography

Professor David Phillips is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, and President of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He began his academic career in the University of Southampton, having earlier carried out post-doctoral work in Texas, USA,and Moscow, then in USSR.He was for ten years Wolfson Professor and Deputy Director of the Royal Institution, moving to Imperial College in 1989 as Professor of Physical Chemistry, then Head of Department for ten years, then served as Dean of Sciences for 4 years before retirement. His expertise is in photochemistry and photophysics, and in fluorescence lifetime imaging.He is the author of some 590 papers in these fields, including many on photodynamic therapy. He was awarded the 2010 Porter Medal of the European, Inter-American and Oceanic  Photochemistry Societies, OBE in 1999 for services to science education, and CBE in 2011 for services to chemistry.

• Dr Luca Salassa, CIC BiomaGUNE, Spain

Biography 

Luca Salassa completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Turin (Italy), where in 2004 he also obtained his PhD under the supervision of Prof. R. Gobetto. The following year, he moved to the University of Montana (USA) where he investigated the use of metal-based fluorescent probes for biophysical applications in the groups of Prof. J. B. A. Ross and Prof. E. Rosenberg. In 2008, after a short stay in Italy, Luca Salassa was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship to study photoactivable metal complexes at the University of Warwick with Prof. P. J. Sadler. He worked in the same group until 2012, when he joined CIC BiomaGUNE in San Sebastián (Spain) with a Ramón y Cajal fellowship. His research is focused on the development of new photoactivable metal complexes for anticancer applications and on the study of their activation mechanism by computational and spectroscopic methods.

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

Biography

Akhil R Chakravarty received his PhD in 1982 from the Calcutta University under the supervision of Prof. Animesh Chakravorty. He later joined Texas A&M University (USA) as a post-doctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. 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-compatible 3d metal ions.

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

Biography

Professor Dunbar received her Ph.D. 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 315 publications including eighteen reviews or book chapters.

• Professor Harry Anderson, University of Oxford, UK

Harry Anderson is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford.  His first research experience came from investigating the complexation of rhodium(I) to DNA bases, with John Brown at Oxford University, where he completed his first degree in 1987.  He then studied porphyrin-based model enzymes with Jeremy Sanders at Cambridge University, for his PhD, before moving to ETH Zürich, Switzerland, to a postdoctoral fellowship in the field of fullerene chemistry, with François Diederich.  He has taught Chemistry in Oxford since 1994.  His research reflects a fascination with the interplay between synthesis, structure and function, particularly relating to the optical and nonlinear optical behaviour of large pi-systems, and supramolecular self-assembly. He is known internationally for his work on porphyrin-based molecular wires.

• Professor Jean-Claude Bünzli, Korea University,South Korea and EPFL, Lausanne

Biography 

Jean-Claude Bünzli was born in 1944. He 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 Carlo Lamberti, University of Torino, Italy

Biography 

Carlo Lamberti: born in 1964; degree in Physics in 1988; Ph.D. in solid state physics in 1993. He is professor in Physical Chemistry at the Torino University since 2006. He has performed more than 100 experiments with synchrotron and neutron sources at ADONE, LURE, ESRF, Soleil, Elettra, Daresbury, SLS, APS, ISIS, FRM-II, ILL. He has been member of the review committees of ESRF and SLS. His research activities are focused in the multitechnical characterization of nanostructured materials. He edited the book Characterization of Semiconductor Heterostructures and Nanostructures, Elsevier, 2008. He has authored and coauthored more than 200 research papers, 8 review articles, 6 book chapters that have received more than 8000 citations (h-index 51). He is the Italian coordinator of the European master in Materials Science MaMaSELF between Torino, Rennes-1, LMU and TUM universities.

• Dr Ilaria Ciofini, CNRS Chimie ParisTech, France

Biography 

Ilaria Ciofini was born in Arezzo (Italy) in 1973. After a degree in Chemistry at the University of Florence (Italy), she got a Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 2001 at University of Fribourg (Switzerland). After one year as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wurzburg (Germany) and two years as associate CNRS researcher at Chimie-Paristech (Paris, France), she got there a permanent CNRS position (in 2004). From 2010 she is Directeur de Recherche CNRS. Her main research interests are related to development and application of DFT and TD-DFT methods to magnetic and spectroscopic properties.

• Professor Gilles Lemercier, Reims Champagne-Ardenne University, France

Biography 

Professor Lemercier completed a PhD at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination CNRS in 1994. He then went on to postdoc positions in organometallic chemistry at EPFL, Lausanne and organic chemistry in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1998 he became Associate Professor at the École Normale Supérieure ENS-Lyon in coordination chemistry for nonlinear optics. Since 2008 he has been Professor at the Reims Champagne-Ardenne University. He works in the synthesis of coordination complexes and related molecular materials for the study and applications of their optical (linear and nonlinear) and magnetic properties in (nano)medicine. He is the co-author of 45 international publications.

• Professor Stephen Bown, University College London, UK

Biography

With a background in physics and gastroenterology, Professor Bown runs a clinical translational research group, dedicated to understanding the interaction of light with living tissue and its use for the detection and treatment of human disease. Bringing scientists and clinicians together, he leads programmes to understand the biology of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT, a technique using light to activate photosensitizing drugs) in normal and diseased tissues and apply the results to patient care. His group pioneered image guided PDT for cancer of the prostate and pancreas and for preventing re-stenosis after balloon angioplasty. He has 300 scientific publications (experimental and clinical work) on the medical applications of lasers and has been invited to lecture in 41 countries. Research fellows from 30 countries have undertaken projects in the laser centre.

• Professor Patrick Bednarski, University of Greifswald, Germany

Biography

Patrick Bednarski  obtained a BSc in biochemistry from the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, USA, and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Washington, Seattle, where he developed new suicide inhibitors of aromatase. In 1986 he accepted an Alexander-von-Humboldt-Fellowship in the Institute of Pharmacy at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he got hooked on the exciting field of platinum anticancer drugs. In 1989 he began his Habilitation in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Regensburg, which he completed in 1997. The topic of the Habilitation among others was the development of light-activated platinum complexes for cancer therapy. Since 1998 he is Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmacy, University of Greifswald. His present research interests are the design, synthesis, metabolism and in vitro testing of novel, more selectively acting antitumor agents, in particular platinum agents.

• Professor Andrée Kirsch-De Mesmaeker, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Biography 

Andrée Kirsch-De Mesmaeker graduated at the free University of Brussels (ULB) and obtained her PhD at ULB in 1972. She occupied two post doc positions, at the Max Planck Institute für Strahlenchemie, Mühlheim a.d. Ruhr, Germany, in pulsed radiolysis of sugars and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, in photophysics of dyes. She occupied permanent positions at the FNRS (National Funds for Scientific Research) and became Director of Research at the FNRS, with main research topics in plotoelectrochemistry. She spent a sabbatical year (1989-1990) at Columbia University, N.Y. In 1999, she was transfered from the FNRS to the Université libre de Bruxelles as Professor in Chemistry. She was head of the Chemistry Department, President of the Jury of Masters, President of Research Commissions at the FNRS in « Organic, Inorganic and Macromolecular Chemistry. Her present research activities comprise photochemistry and photophysics of transition metal complexes with biomolecules and the study of polynuclear metal-organic compounds.

• Professor Jacqueline Barton, California Institute of Technology, USA

Biography   

Professor Jacqueline K. Barton is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Barton was awarded the A.B. summa cum laude at Barnard College and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at Columbia University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Laboratories and Yale University, she became an assistant professor at Hunter College, City University of New York. She then returned to Columbia University as a member of the faculty. In the fall of 1989, she joined the faculty at Caltech, and in 2009 began her term as Chair of the Division. Professor Barton has pioneered the application of transition metal complexes to probe recognition and reactions of double helical DNA. She designed chiral metal complexes that recognize nucleic acid sites with specificities rivaling DNA-binding proteins. In seminal studies, Barton has also elucidated a new property of DNA, how electrons migrate through the DNA double helix. Barton has received numerous awards. These include the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. In October 2011, she received the National Medal of Science.

• Dr Claudia Turro, Ohio State Univesity, USA

Biography to follow.