Chemistry Seminar Series: Supramolecular Chemistry Mediated Cell Engineering for Targeted Therapy by Professor Ruibing Wang

The Chemistry Seminar at Nazarbayev University is set to commence with an exciting invited research lecture titled “Supramolecular Chemistry Mediated Cell Engineering for Targeted Therapy” by distinguished guest speaker Professor Ruibing Wang from the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau.

The seminar will include a 45-minute research lecture followed by a 10-minute Q&A session. Participants are encouraged to join five minutes before the session via MS Teams.

Date: February 21, 2025 (Friday)
Time: 18:00 Astana time
Link to the recording is here

About the Speaker

Dr. Ruibing Wang is currently Professor of Supramolecular Pharmaceutics at
University of Macau. He obtained his BSc and PhD degrees from Jilin University and
Queen’s University, Canada, respectively. He joined University of Macau in 2014. Prof.
Wang’s research interest is supramolecular biomaterials, and cell-mimetic and cell-based
pharmaceutics. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers on journals such as
Matter, Nature Comm., Sci. Adv., JACS, Angew, Adv. Mater., Mater. Today etc, with a total
citation of over 12,000 times and H-index of 63. He has won several prestigious awards and
honors including 2018/2020/2022/2024 Macao Science and Technology Award - Natural
Science Award and Technological Invention Award, as well as 2019 UM Teaching
Excellence Award. He is among the list of Stanford’s World's Top 2% Scientists for many
years in a row. He is an active grant examiner for National Natural Science Foundation of
China (NSFC), French National Research Agency (ANR), Israel Science Foundation (ISF),
Czech Science Foundation (GACR), and National Science Centre of Poland (NCN). In
addition, he actively serves as Editorial Board Member of Chinese Chemical Letters, and
Supramolecular Materials, and Editorial Advisory Board Member of ACS Applied Bio
Materials, he is also a council member of Supramolecular Chemistry Advisory Committee of
Chinese Chemical Society.

Abstract
Cells are a basic unit of living organisms and using them as drug carriers or
therapeutics has unique advantages. During the past several years, we have developed a
unique “supramolecular cell engineering” approach where nanomedicines or biomaterials are
self-assembled either extracellularly or intracellularly via artificial host-guest interactions, to
anchor nanomedicine or biomaterials either on the surface of, or inside, the cells for targeted
delivery to specific tissues, e.g. driven by the inflammatory tropism of immune cells.1 We
show that the supramolecularly engineered cells may efficiently deliver medicine to disease
tissues and effectively treat several diseases including acute pneumonia,2 cardiovascular
diseases and solid tumors.3 We also show that intracellularly gelated macrophage may
function as “cell sponge” to absorb inflammatory cytokines, endotoxins and even bacteria, to
effectively fight against infectious diseases.