Title: LIVE-CELL PROTEIN CHEMISTRY IN HEALTH AND DISEASE
Abstract: Investigating the functional mechanisms of proteins within their "native environment"—living cells or animals—represents a challenging scientific conundrum as well as an interdisciplinary frontier spanning chemistry, life sciences and medicine. My group has been interested in the development and applications of live-cell chemistry for mechanistic study as well as therapeutic engineering of proteins. Towards this goal, we have established a chemical reaction repertoire that can be genetically encoded in proteins in living systems. For example, we have been leading the development and applications of “bond-cleavage” bioorthogonal reactions (termed “bioorthogonal cleavage reactions”), which opened a new direction for gain-of-function study of proteins under physiological as well as pathological settings. These in vivo chemical protein technologies have yielded interesting biological discoveries, revealing the crosstalk and remodeling of the tumor-immune microenvironment mediated by protein kinases, hydrolases, as well as transmembrane proteins such as GPCRs. In addition, we further integrated multiple bioorthogonal reactions as a combinatorial chemistry strategy that has enabled the modular conjugation and release of various therapeutic modalities. By recruiting various immune cells, our strategy demonstrated superior anti-tumor activity and tumor-specific immune responses in patient-derived organoids of solid tumors.
Biography: Prof. Peng Chen is currently the Qiantang-Boya Distinguished Professor of Chemical Biology at Peking University, and the New Cornerstone Investigator from the New Cornerstone Foundation. Before joining Peking University in 2009, he obtained Ph.D with Prof. Chuan He at The University of Chicago and finished postdoctoral training with Prof. Peter Schultz at The Scripps Research Institute. He is currently also the Director of Chemical Biology Division at Chinese Chemical Society and the Executive Editor at ACS Chemical Biology. He has received many awards including the Xplore prize, the National Natural Science award, EFMC Excellence in Chemical Biology Award and the Emil Thomas Kaiser Award from the Protein Society.
His group is interested in developing and applying new chemistry tools to investigate protein-based interactions and activities in living systems. He has been leading the development of bioorthogonal cleavage reactions, which has enabled the gain-of-function study of proteins as well as other biomolecules in living cells and animals. This has created a new direction in bioorthogonal chemistry with broad utilities in life sciences and medicine. He is also interested in developing cutting-edge technology for membrane protein degradation towards solid tumor treatment.
LOCATION:Pfizer Lecture Hall STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20260722T201500Z DTEND:20260722T214500Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR