University of Queensland的Andrew Whittaker教授将于9月21日上午10:00在环境资源楼939会议室做学术报告。

Professor Andrew Whittaker was awarded his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry at the University of Queensland in 1986. Subsequently he held postdoctoral positions at the USTL, France and the MPIP, Germany followed by three years as a research chemist at BP Research, Sunbury-on-Thames, UK. He returned to the University of Queensland in 1990 as a specialist in solid-state NMR and polymer chemistry. He has been a full professor since 2004. In 2005 he joined the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology where he serves on the executive and on numerous university boards. His research involves using advanced polymer chemistry to solve important problems in technology and health fields, and has led to over 280 refereed papers and 5 patents. Key application areas currently being investigated are 1) polymers for sensing of disease, drug delivery and tissue regeneration, 2) polymers for advanced lithographic technologies, 3) modern NMR and MRI methodologies. The enabling skills of his group are expertise in synthetic chemistry, physical chemistry and characterization. He was received a number of national awards from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, and was awarded an Australian Research Council Australian Professorial Fellowship in 2011, and is a member of the ARC College of Experts. In 2013 and 2014 he was awarded The National High-end Foreign Experts Recruitment Project by the P.R. of China, and in 2013 awarded a World Famous Scientists Lecturing in Hubei Province. In 2014 he was awarded the Paul J Flory Research Prize for excellence in polymer research by the Polychar World Forum. In late 2014 he was also honoured with the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship. Whittaker is past-president of the Pacific Polymer Federation, past-chair of the Polymer Division of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, current president of the Polymer Society of Australasia and is a member of several international boards.

Biologically-Response Polymeric 19F MRI agents

Andrew K. Whittaker, Kewei Wang, Cheng Zhang, Kristofer J. Thurecht, Hui Peng

ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bionano Science and Technology; Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and the Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Australia.
a.whittaker@uq.edu.au; www.uq.edu.au/polymer-chemistry/

Recently there has been intense interest in the development of fluorinated molecules to allow tracking of therapeutic particles and cells in vivo. The motivation for this is the very high selectivity of the 19F imaging experiment, since unlike in 1H NMR imaging, the body does not contain a confounding fluorine background signal. In principle therefore, highly-selective 19F images can be superimposed on high-resolution anatomical 1H images, thus allowing tracking of suitably-labelled cells or biomarker molecules. In this presentation we will describe the motivation for the development of new partly-fluorinated copolymers which have outstanding potential as 19F MRI imaging agents, and in particular as agents sensitive to the biological environment [1-7]. The discussion will focus on linear, branched and star macromolecules incorporating the monomers N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate and/or oligo-ethylene glycol methacrylate which are responsive to external stimuli, for example local temperature, pH or ionic strength [4,5,7]. In this presentation I will also describe our programs in imaging and delivery to small animal models of glioma, prostate and skin cancer.

Acknowledgements. The authors wish to acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council (CE140100036, DP0987407, DP110104299, LE0775684 and LE0668517) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1021759, APP1046831). Access to equipment within the ANFF is also acknowledged.

[1] H. Peng, I. Blakey, B. Dargaville, F. Rasoul, S. Rose, A.K. Whittaker, Biomacromolecules 2009, 10 374.
[2] K.J. Thurecht, I. Blakey, H. Peng, O. Squires, S. Hsu, C. Alexander, A.K. Whittaker, J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 2010, 132, 5336.
[3] H. Peng, K.J. Thurecht, I. Blakey, E. Taran and A.K. Whittaker, Macromolecules 2012, 45, 8681.
[4] K. Wang, H. Peng, K.J. Thurecht, S. Puttick and A. K. Whittaker, Polym. Chem. 2013, 4. 4480.
[5]] K. Wang, H. Peng, K.J. Thurecht, S. Puttick and A. K. Whittaker, Polym. Chem. 2014, 5, 1760.
[6] B.E. Rolfe, I. Blakey, O. Squires, H. Peng, N.R.B. Boase, C. Alexander, P.G. Parsons, G.M. Boyle, A.K. Whittaker, K.J. Thurecht, J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 2413.
[7] C. Zhang, H. Peng, A.K. Whittaker, J. Polym. Sci. A: Polym. Chem. 2014, 52 (16), 2375.