Nanocatalytic materials face significant challenges in medical applications due to their inherent structural defects, which limit their catalytic activity and selectivity, making it difficult to effectively replace natural enzymes in biological contexts. Developing intelligent, safe, and efficient nanocatalytic materials, combined with precise disease biomarkers and new preclinical research models, is crucial to advancing the basic research and clinical applications of nanocatalytic materials, thereby improving the clinical diagnosis and treatment of major regional diseases in our province.
Our laboratory focuses on Single-Atom Catalysts (SACs), characterized by atomically dispersed active sites, maximizing atom utilization, precisely located metal centers, unique metal-support interactions, and uniform coordination environments. These advantages of SACs can significantly enhance the specific activity of each metal atom, leading to superior catalytic activity and selectivity, potentially mimicking or even surpassing the functions of natural enzymes. Through independently developed spatial separation and self-assembly methods, our laboratory has prepared a series of metal single-atom catalysts, optimized parameters to achieve 100% high selectivity in various redox reactions, and significantly higher activity than commercial catalysts. Our related work has been published in the Nature/Science series and top chemistry journals such as JACS, Angew Chem, and Chem, gaining widespread recognition and attention in the academic community.
Additionally, our laboratory maintains a long-term, stable collaboration with Academician Xiyun Yan, the pioneering scientist who discovered nanozymes. Supported by the "Sanming Projects" of the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee, we established the "Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Nanozymes." Since our collaboration, we have addressed clinical issues in the early screening and diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a major regional disease. We developed a highly sensitive nanozyme test strip method for detecting EB virus to screen for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, expanded the clinical testing sample size, and applied for a medical device registration certificate. This method offers advantages of simplicity, speed, no pollution, and high sensitivity, making it highly significant for large-scale early screening and diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
Furthermore, our laboratory's affiliated unit possesses advantageous clinical resources and a solid foundational research team. To safely and effectively protect our province's unique and valuable clinical biosamples, we have standardized and conducted the cultivation, preservation, development, utilization, and sharing of clinical resources and organoid-derived "living" samples of major regional diseases. this effectively supports the clinical translation of nanocatalytic materials developed within our laboratory.
Building on the existing foundation, our laboratory aims to establish an intelligent, efficient, and safe high-support nanocatalytic material research system, integrating preclinical validation and translational research. We focus on major diseases in the Guangdong region, advancing a closed-loop research system to promote the translational research of intelligent nanocatalytic materials in the medical field.
