Chemical Nanobiotechnology of Mitochondria and Endoplasmic Reticulum

 

Research

 

In the last couple of decades, cancer has emerged as one of the most life-threatening diseases globally. Current chemotherapies that inhibit traditional targets or tyrosine kinases eventually led to drug resistance through intrinsic or extrinsic mechanisms. As a result, a huge effort has been dedicated to explore novel targets and biomarkers to improve therapeutic outcomes and overcome drug resistance. In this context cellular organelles like mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and nucleus have emerged as major targets in cancer chemotherapy due to their central role in signaling hubs, bioenergetics, biosynthesis, cellular stress response and alternative location of genomic materials (Fig. 1). However, the major challenge in current chemical biology is to spatial targeting of these organelles selectively in diseased states like cancer due to the lack of proper chemical tools and techniques. Further, the scenario becomes even more complicated due to the complex cross-talk between these organelles inside cancer cells.

To address this challenges, we focused our research in three different but interlinked directions:

(a) to develop novel small molecule chemical biology tools to illuminate and impair those organelles,

(b) understand the cellular trafficking of the small molecules and nanoscale probes into those organelles and

(c) explore the organelles microenvironment to understand the organelle cross-talk and use this for therapeutic implications.