TOPIC: Cross-membrane delivery for cell therapy
SPEAKER: Dr. Rongjun Chen, Senior Lecture, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, UK
TIME:APRIL6 (Wednesday) AM10:30 
LOCATION: Room 518, Chemistry Building A (化学A楼518会议室)
INVITER: Prof. Xinyuan Zhu (朱新远 教授)
      

Dr Rongjun Chen
Senior Lecture
Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
E-mail: rongjun.chen@imperial.ac.uk
Webpage: www.imperial.ac.uk/people/rongjun.chen

Abstract:
Successful preservation of live mammalian cells is an absolute prerequisite for cell therapy that rely on the delivery of new live cells into a tissue of a patient, such as blood transfusion and stem cells transplantation. Currently this is achieved by cryopreserving cells utilizing high concentrations of toxic cryoprotectant DMSO. Significant interest exists in the development of alternative protectants such as trehalose, which is a hydrophilic disaccharide accumulated in a wide variety of freezing- and desiccation-tolerant organisms. A range of techniques have been investigated for delivering membrane-impermeable trehalose into cells for biopreservation. However, methods yielding sufficient intracellular trehalose for cell preservation have utilized hazardous materials, such as mutant bacterial toxins, or have lacked scalability, such as the use of microinjection. This talk will cover our recent efforts in the precise control of membrane permeabilization using nontoxic, biocompatible and cell-permeating polymers, which can efficiently deliver trehalose into cells without causing cell damage. This could represent an alternative cryopreservation protocol, suitable for research and therapeutic applications.
Biography:
Dr Rongjun Chen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. After obtaining his MSc degree in Materials Science from Tsinghua University in 2003, he studied for his PhD degree at Cambridge University during 2003-2007 with financial support of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and the Overseas Research Student (ORS) Award, focused on polymer drug delivery. During Oct 2006-Sep 2009, he carried out his postdoctoral research first on lyophilisation of pharmaceuticals and then on manufacture of clinical-grade viral vectors for gene therapy. From Oct 2009 – Apr 2013, he started his independent academic career by taking a tenure-track faculty position as Group Leader and BHRC Senior Translational Research Fellow at Leeds University. In May 2013, he moved to Imperial College as a lecturer. His research interests focus on synthesis and biomedical applications of functional polymers and nanomaterials. The research in the Chen group has been funded by BBSRC, European Commission, Wellcome Trust, MedImmune, GSK, STFC and Newton Fund.