The new generation of molecular medicine is transforming the healthcare paradigm, emphasizing the integration of advanced molecular technologies into diagnostics and therapeutics. By bridging biology and chemistry with precision-targeted approaches, molecular medicines can now offer tailored solutions to complex diseases. Against this backdrop, our lab intends to employ a multidisciplinary approach that integrates immunotherapy, molecular imaging, and drug delivery strategies to unravel the complexities of neurological dysfunction. This research will target a broad spectrum of conditions, from aggressive brain cancers like glioblastoma to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, advancing both scientific understanding and therapeutic interventions.

Recent years have witnessed remarkable advances in cancer immunotherapy, which strategically harnesses and modulates the host immune system to recognize and eliminate cancer cells. Despite these breakthroughs, highly aggressive tumors such as glioblastoma continue to evade effective immune surveillance because of their profoundly immunosuppressive microenvironment and limited therapeutic accessibility within the brain. Through the integration of synthetic chemistry and chemical biology, we seek to elucidate the complex molecular and cellular events that govern antitumor immune responses in the brain, thus contributing toward the development of next-generation immunotherapeutic strategies for glioblastoma treatment.

Molecular imaging techniques that enable visualization of complex biological processes at the cellular and molecular levels can provide critical insights into brain disorders. Our lab will focus on the development of chemical probes for applications ranging from image-guided brain tumor resection to the detection of emerging biomarker events associated with early-stage neurodegenerative diseases. These probes will be designed to deliver analyte-specific information across wide-range of spatio-temporal scales through the integration of multiple imaging modalities, thereby facilitating precise surgical intervention and disease diagnosis.