Dr. Lei Zhang Visit WIPM

On November 8, 2017, Doctor Lei Zhang was invited to give an academic report entitled “Development of Responsive Agents For Magnetic Resonance Imaging” in the 24th Tianjuan spectrum Youth Forum of Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathmatics (WIPM). Prof. Xin Zhou, vice director of WIPM presided over the forum. Director Maili Liu, Prof. Feng Deng and other teachers and students attended the forum.

Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Dallas, Texas State University in August 2017, supervised by Professor Allen. Dean Sherry. Dr. Zhang majored in design and synthesis of metal organic magnetic resonance contrast agents and their application in the field of biomedical imaging/The design and synthesis of lanthanide metal chiral host molecules and chiral molecular recognition.. Relevant results have been published in the Journal of American Chemical Society，Angewandte Chemie International Edition，Chemistry - A European Journal and other magazines.

During the report, Dr. Zhang first explained the principle of CEST MRI, followed by introduction of lanthanide metal chiral host molecules used for in vivo environment-responsive PARACEST. Dr. Zhang designed and synthesized a metal organic EuDO3A which can greatly increase the proton chemical shift of lactic acid -OH, thus realized complete separation of proton chemical shift between lactic acid and water. He then developed another branched-chain chiral center-containing compound YbDO3A, which successfully identified two conformational isomers of lactic acid (D- and L- actic acid) by CEST. At the same time, He also prepared a series of pH-sensitive EuDOTA and DyDOTA compounds with different length of alkylamino chain and indicated that additional acid/basic groups can change the CEST MRI proton exchange rate.

The participants showed great interests in Dr. Zhang's report. There was an active discussion between them on some academic topics.