Chemical probes for lysosomal biology

Dr Aimee Kao, MD, PhD, is the John Douglas French Foundation Endowed Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. She studied Neuroscience at Brown University and received MD/PhD degrees from the University of Iowa. She completed Neurology residency at UCSF, followed by fellowships in Behavioral Neurology and molecular genetics of ageing. She is an expert in managing Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive disorders. Dr Kao’s laboratory investigates the basic mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders, with a focus on how ageing, stress and gene mutations disrupt lysosomal function and protein homeostasis. She currently directs the UCSF Medical Scientist Training Program and is principle investigator of an NIH-sponsored Tau Center without Walls. Dr Kao has been awarded the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Distinguished Investigator Award in Neurodegenerative Diseases, the Glenn Award for Research in the Biological Mechanisms of Aging and the American Neurological Society’s Derek Denny Brown Award.

Professor Jinming Gao holds an Elaine Dewey Sammons Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He received a PhD in physical organic chemistry from Harvard University, and he completed postdoctoral training in biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Gao’s lab studies the science of nanotechnology and cancer. Researchers in the Gao Lab designed proton transistor nanoparticles that digitize tumour acidotic signals from dysregulated cancer cell metabolism. Pegsitacianine, one such nanosensor, recently received Breakthrough Therapy Designation in cytoreductive surgery of peritoneal metastasis. Phase 2 clinical trials show Pegsitacianine identified unresected residual diseases in over 50% of patients after routine cancer surgery. Dr Gao’s lab also discovered synthetic polymers (PC7A, PSC7A) for non-canonical activation of stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway with improved tumour and cell selectivity and antitumor immunity over small molecule agonists. A nanoparticle STING agonist has entered first-in-human trial in November, 2023.

Dr Robert E Campbell is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, School of Science, at The University of Tokyo (2018 - present). He earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of British Columbia (1994-2000) and undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego (2000-2003). From 2003 to 2023 he was a Professor at the University of Alberta. He is a leading developer of optogenetic tools, including a complete spectral palette of fluorescent protein-based calcium ion indicators. He has distributed >8000 samples of fluorescent protein-based tools to labs around the world. Recognitions include a Stanford Neurosciences Institute Visiting Scholar Award (2017), the Teva Canada Limited Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Award (2016), the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada (2015), and the Boehringer Ingelheim Research Excellence Award (2014), and a Canada Research Chair (2004-2014).

Simon Newstead holds the David Phillips Chair of Molecular Biophysics in the Department of Biochemistry, is a member of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery in Oxford and is a Professorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Simon received his MBiochem (Hons) degree from the University of Bath in 2001 and his PhD in protein crystallography at St Andrews in 2004. Simon then joined the membrane protein laboratory of Professor So Iwata at Imperial College London, where he worked on structural studies of secondary active transporters and methods development in membrane protein structural biology. In 2009, he was awarded an MRC career development award to establish a research group in Oxford focused on cellular nutrient uptake and drug transport. In 2013, he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and senior subject tutor (Ordinary Student) in Biochemistry at Christ Church, Oxford. In 2015, he was promoted to Professor and in 2019 elected to the Royal Society of Biology.  In 2022, Simon was appointed to the David Phillips Chair in Molecular Biophysics and Professorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College. Simon currently leads the Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics research theme in the Department of Biochemistry.  

Dr Jiajie Diao is Associate Professor at University of University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and a co-director of the Center for Chemical Imaging in Biomedicine. Dr Diao received his PhD in physics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and conducted his postdoc research at Stanford University. His research is using advanced biophysical tools to study subcellular dynamics of organells. Dr Diao has published more than 130 papers in top-tier journals including Nature, PNAS, Nat Struct Mol Biol, Nat Commun, Nat Protoc, Cell Chem Biol, Cell Rep, eLife, JACS, Angew Chem, ACS Nano, Biomaterials. In 2017, he was awarded the Young Scientist Prize in Biological Physics by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He is an editorial board member of BMC Biology and a guest editor of PNAS, and has been serving as a reviewer for more than 80 journals.

Nalan Liv is Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, at Center for Molecular Medicine, University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU). She leads a cellular nanoimaging and endo-lysosomal biology research team, and coordinates the Cell Microscopy Core. Nalan’s current research is dedicated to high-resolution understanding of intracellular structure-function relations in cancer cell biology, and she is awarded with multiple grants to study the role of lysosomes in carcinogenesis. Her team develops innovative high-resolution microscopy approaches and utilizes a combination of molecular biology, live-cell fluorescence microscopy, and ultrastructural electron microscopy tools to resolve how the endo-lysosomal system is rewired in cancer.

Dr Hackett is a mid-career researcher in the field of analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy, currently completing an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship at Curtin University. He completed his PhD at The University of Sydney (2011, Chemistry), which was followed by two-postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (2011 – 2016). His primary research interest is the development and optimization of novel elemental and bio-molecular microscopy techniques for application to the field of neuroscience to study the mechanisms of brain ageing and neurodegenerative disease. The main spectroscopic techniques involved in his research program include Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS).

Dr Chayan Kanti Nandi, is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (IIT Mandi). He completed his PhD in 2006 in physical chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur India. Professor Nandi was a post doctoral fellow in Geothe University Germany (2006-2009) and in Princeton University (2009-2010). He received the prestigious Alexander Von Humboldt (AvH) Fellowship during his stay in Germany. After completing his post doctoral fellowship, he joined IIT Mandi as an Assistant Professor in 2010. He has several awards in his name. He has been awarded the Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) bronze medal in 2020 for his outstanding research in nanomaterials chemistry. His main research focus is to design new fluorescent nanomaterials such as carbon nanodots, metal nanoclusters, quantum dots, super paramagnetics iron oxide nanoparticles for their application in single molecule localization based super resolution microscopy.