Dr. Ick Chan Kwon is a Presidential Scholar at KIST-DFCI On-Site-Lab in Department of Cancer Biology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute Boston. He is a Tenured Principal Research Scientist of Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in College of Engineering at Seoul National University and his Ph. D. in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from University of Utah. After a post-doctoral training at CCCD in University of Utah, he joined KIST where he started his research on polymeric nanoparticle-based drug delivery system for antibiotics, anticancer drugs and gene therapy. He also pioneered in a research filed of Theragnosis, by combining molecular imaging and drug delivery system with smart nano-probes. He is a fellow of The Korean Academy of Science & Technology and a member of The National Academy of Engineering of Korea.
Below is a summary of his presentation
For decades, molecular imaging which can monitor inter-/intracellular functions or molecular processes in an organism has provided valuable information for various research fields. Biomarkers such as enzymes, receptors and proteins can be utilized as a target of molecular imaging since they can provide information for early diagnosis and monitoring therapeutic effect of diseases. Among them, receptor-ligand interaction based molecular imaging technique has been emerging promising strategy in theragnosis of intractable diseases such as cancer.
In this talk, Dr. Kwon introduced epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and CD 47 receptor-specific self-quenched imaging probes, which can emit fluorescence (activate) via de-quenching reaction in lysosome. His talk also included a simple noninvasive labeling and tracking technique for cell therapeutics via combination of metabolic glycoengineering and bioorthogonal copper-free click chemistry, resulting in the cells being tracked via near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF), magnetic resonance (MR) and computed tomography (CT) imaging without cytotoxicity and functional interference.