Date: January 10^th

Time: 14:00

Venue: TD505

Speaker: Prof. MAO Hanbin

Host: Prof. Gang CHEN

Title: Mechano-pharmaceutical Screening of Drug Hits against Biomolecules

Abstract: Mechanochemical coupling describes the correlation between the strength of a chemical bond and the mechanical stress it experiences. This is a key subject in the newly emerged field, mechanochemistry, which has led to a number of exotic applications in materials, biomedical, and chemical fields. However, mechanochemical principles have not been explored in drug screening through the evaluation of the chemical binding between small molecules and biomolecules. Given that mechanical forces such as the shear force in blood stream are ubiquitous for the binding of drugs to biomolecules, it is an urgent call to incorporate this factor during drug screening in a more physiologically relevant setting. Using force-based single-molecule techniques such as optical tweezers, our group has been able to measure pico-Newton force change in single biomolecules such as nucleic acids and proteins, to which individual ligand molecules bind specifically. Using this strategy, we isolated a beta amyloid fragment, diphenylalanine, the dimerization of which serves as the nucleation for beta amyloid aggregation important for the occurrence of Alzheimer Disease. After screening an NIH library, we confirmed the effectiveness of this mechano-pharmaceutical screening approach. In addition, we identified new compounds that can reduce cell toxicities induced by aggregation of full-length beta amyloid peptides.

About the Speaker: Professor Hanbin MAO got his PhD training in Analytical Chemistry at Texas A&M University in 2003, focusing on bioanalyses using microfluidics. After two years of postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley specializing in structural elucidation using single-molecule force spectroscopy, Dr. Mao joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Kent State University in 2005 and rose to full professor in 2014.  Professor MAO’s research is focused on biosensing and single molecular biophysics. His research lab has developed a new interdisciplinary field, mechano-analytical chemistry, in which mechanical properties of molecules have been exploited for (bio)chemical analyses and mechanochemistry studies. Recently, Professor MAO and coworkers have brought single-molecule force spectroscopy techniques into drug screening platforms in another new field named as mechano-pharmaceutics. Over the years, Mao lab has attracted millions of US dollars in research support, published ~100 papers in high-profile journals, and trained 13 PhDs, half of which has secured tenured or tenure track positions in US and China.