Principal Investigator

Dr. Homan Kang’s research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School is centered on a fundamental question: how can the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials be engineered to control their biological fate in vivo? His laboratory investigates the principles governing nanoparticle transport, nano–bio interactions, tissue penetration, pharmacokinetics, and clearance, and translates these insights into next-generation platforms for precision imaging, drug delivery, and therapy.

A defining theme of Dr. Kang’s work is the development of mechanism-driven design rules for clinically translatable nanomedicine. His early studies established key physicochemical determinants—including hydrodynamic size, surface charge, mass-to-charge ratio, and elimination kinetics—that govern the renal clearance of organic nanocarriers. He subsequently extended this framework to iron chelation therapy, developing ultrasmall nanochelators capable of efficiently capturing excess iron while minimizing off-target accumulation and enabling rapid urinary elimination. Together, these studies demonstrate how rational control of nanoscale properties can transform pharmacokinetics, safety, and therapeutic performance.

Dr. Kang’s laboratory has also pioneered new concepts in immune-guided tumor targeting and tissue-selective NIR-II imaging. His group demonstrated that near-infrared fluorophores can exploit tumor-associated immune cells as endogenous carriers for tumor localization, establishing an alternative targeting paradigm that does not rely solely on conventional ligand–receptor recognition. In parallel, his team developed cartilage-targeting NIR fluorophores for high-contrast visualization of early inflammatory joint disease, expanding the role of molecular imaging beyond diagnosis toward image-guided intervention and therapeutic development.

Across these efforts, Dr. Kang’s research integrates nanomedicine, optical imaging, and precision delivery to uncover generalizable principles of how engineered materials interact with complex biological systems. With more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, his overarching goal is to establish transformative nanoplatforms that bridge fundamental nano–bio interactions with clinical decision-making, disease-specific targeting, and precision therapy.