Zhang Hongbo

Group Name: Functional Materials for Medicine

Subject: Pharmacy

University: Åbo Akademi University

Lab Website: link

AboCRIS Profile: link

Areas of Expertise

Functional Materials have played a more and more critical role in developing novel treatment methods for different diseases. Our group focuses on designing all kinds of functional materials, at different scales, to solve clinical and biological problems.

We have broad collaborations with hospitals, and most of our projects have clinical doctors involved, and initially, from a real-life clinical question. Our group is multidisciplinary, which involves an interplay between physics, materials science, synthetic organic chemistry, engineering, biology, and medicine. We aim that many of our designs could be clinically applicable in the future, and have a tremendous social impact in treating diseases.

I am coordinating many projects from the Research Council of Finland, Business Finland, and different foundations. I am also part of many consortium projects, including the InFlame flagship, NAP4DIVE (EU Horizon), Nordic POP, NordicPharmTrain, PII: Printed Intelligence Infrastructure, MADNESS (ÅAU Center of Excellence). As well as the collaboration project with companies, e.g., the joint project with Bayer Oy. I collaborate broadly with Harvard University, USA, and Chinese hospitals.

Development of Aptamer-DNAzyme Based Metal-Nucleic Acid Frameworks for Gastric Cancer therapy. Nature Communications. 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48149-9
An autocatalytic multicomponent DNAzyme nanomachine for tumor-specific photothermal therapy sensitization in pancreatic cancer. Nature Communications. 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42740-2
Therapeutic DNAzymes: From Structure Design to Clinical Applications. Advanced Materials. 2023. DOI: 10.1002/adma.202300374
Photothermal Responsive Nanosized Hybrid Polymersome as Versatile Therapeutics Co-Delivery Nanovehicle for Effective Tumor Suppression. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2019. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817251116
Programmable and Multifunctional DNA-Based Materials for Biomedical Applications. Advanced Materials. 2018. DOI: 10.1002/adma.201703658