New Chemistry of Making Porphyrin-based Nanostructures

卟啉是自然界中的内源性生色团，如红细胞中的血红素和绿色植物中的叶绿素。卟啉和类似卟啉的分子在能源(作为染料敏化的太阳能电池)和医学(作为光动力治疗剂和荧光探针)方面的应用是众所周知的，但到目前为止，对其潜在的纳米级性能的研究还很少。在之前NSERC发现基金的支持下，我的实验室发现了“孔体”，这是第一个具有内在多峰光子性质的全有机纳米颗粒(自然材料2011)，被誉为“一种粒子统治所有它们”(自然方法2011)，并被加拿大癌症协会命名为“2011年十大癌症突破”之一。

Porphyrins are the endogenous chromophores of nature such as hemes in red blood cells and chlorophylls in green plants. Porphyrins and porphyrin-like molecules are well known for their applications in energy (as dye-sensitized solar cells) and in medicine (as photodynamic therapy agents and fluorescent probes) but rarely investigated for its potential for its nanoscale properties until now. Supported by the previous NSERC discovery grant, my lab discovered ‘porphysomes’, the first all-organic nanoparticles with intrinsic multimodal photonic properties (Nature Materials 2011), hailed as “one particle to rule them all” (Nature Methods 2011) and named as one of the “Top Ten Cancer Breakthroughs in 2011” by the Canadian Cancer Society.