Dr. Jinming Gao is a Professor of Oncology, Pharmacology and Otolaryngology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also holds a joint appointment in Chemistry and Bioengineering at UT Dallas. More »

The Gao lab is working at the interface of nanotechnology, cancer biology and clinical oncology. Our primary research interest is to design and develop novel nanomaterials and nanoarchitectures for cancer diagnosis and targeted therapeutic applications. One of our recent inventions is a library of "pH transistor" nanoparticles with binary off/on reporters that are finely tunable in a broad range of physiological pH (4.0-7.4). The ultra pH-sensitive property is a unique nanoscale phenomenon that arises from the cooperative self-assembly of amphiphilic copolymers. These new nanotools uncovered unprecendented biological insights on tumor acidosis, lysosome signaling and metabolism, and cytosolic delivery of biologics. Based on these knowledge, we are implementing the pH transistor technology in several clinically relevant applications, including cancer staging, image-guided surgery, and immunotherapy.

A minimalist nanovaccine, comprising a simple physical mixture of an antigen and a synthetic polymeric nanoparticle,not only enhances antigen delivery and cross-presentation, but also stimulates the STING pathway to boost antitumour immunity for cancer immunotherapy.(Nature Nanotech. ) PDF

A transistor-like pH nanoprobe is invented to illuminate and delineate tumor margin with binary readouts for image-guided resection of solid cancers. (Nature Biomed. Eng.) PDF

A unique all-or-nothing protonation distribution was discovered for ultra-pH sensitive nanoprobes, which explained the molecular basis of pH cooperativity and binary on/off switch of fluorescence (Nature Comm.). PDF