School of Chemistry

Rongjun Chen

Senior Translational Research Fellow
Research section: Organic Chemistry

Contact details

Keywords

Drug delivery
Disease therapy
Cancer treatment
Stimuli-responsive polymers
Biofunctional nanomaterials
Molecular imaging
Biopreservation

Research interests

My main research interest lies in the development and evaluation of drug delivery systems for disease therapy. It covers: (1) design, synthesis and characterization of biofunctional materials (e.g. stimuli-responsive polymers, functionalized nanoparticles, micelles and peptides) as generic non-viral vectors; (2) formulation of specific drug delivery systems with integrated imaging, targeting and therapeutic functionalities for functional delivery of anticancer drugs and therapeutic proteins and nucleic acids. In-vitro and in-vivo testing in cell and tumor models for the treatment of specific diseases including cancers and cardiovascular diseases; (3) investigation of extracellular and intracellular dynamics and mechanisms to optimize drug delivery systems.

My other research interests and areas of expertise include: molecular imaging using quantum dots and magnetic particles; interactions of biomaterials with lipid membranes and toxicity studies; cell labeling and patterning, and development of three-dimensional multicellular constructs; biopreservation (e.g. cryopreservation, lyophilization) of live cells for long-term storage by functional intracellular delivery of stabilizing excipients.

Useful links

Centre for Molecular Nanoscience   
Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology    
Biomedical Health Research Centre   

Selected publications

Ho VHB, Slater NKH, Chen R. pH-responsive endosomolytic pseudo-peptides for drug delivery to multicellular spheroids tumour models. Biomaterials 2011, 32, 2953-2958.

Zhang S, Nelson A, Coldrick Z, Chen R. The Effects of Substituent Grafting on the Interaction of pH-Responsive Polymers with Phospholipid Monolayers. Langmuir 2011, 27(13), 8530-8539.

Liechty W, Chen R, Farzaneh F, Tavassoli M, Slater NKH. Synthetic pH-responsive polymers for protein transduction. Advanced Materials 2009, 21, 3910-3914.

Chen R, Khormaee S, Eccleston ME, Slater NKH. The role of hydrophobic amino acid grafts in the enhancement of membrane-disruptive activity of pH-responsive pseudo-peptides. Biomaterials 2009, 30 (10), 1954-1961.