Scientists - Research Faculty

Ruiwu Liu

Biography

Dr. Ruiwu Liu is a Research Professor of Chemistry at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Davis. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in medicinal chemistry from the School of Pharmacy, West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu, China, in 1990. His PhD degree in medicinal chemistry was earned in 1995 at the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China. He then joined the faculty of the Institute and spent a year at the Research Center of Taisho Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Japan, as a visiting researcher. Dr. Liu joined Dr. Kit Lam’s combinatorial chemistry laboratory as a postdoc at UC Davis in 1999. He was appointed as a Research Assistant Professor at UC Davis in 2004 and promoted to Research Associate Professor and Research Professor in 2010 and 2016, respectively. He is co-director of Combinatorial Chemistry & Chemical Biology Shared Resource at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. His primary research focus has been in methods development for combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening, and applying these technologies to drug discovery. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles and 8 book chapters. In addition, he is an inventor of 6 issued patents.

Expertise and Research Interests

Dr. Liu has extensive experience and expertise in combinatorial chemistry, peptide chemistry, conjugate chemistry, medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and molecular imaging. His major research interests include new technology for combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening, targeted therapeutics for cancer, and new chemical tools for molecular imaging. Dr. Liu’s current research focuses on 1) development of integrin-targeting imaging and therapeutic agents for cancer treatment; 2) development of neutralizing antiserum and peptides against Zika virus; 3) development of novel galectin-1 inhibitors as a new class of anti-cancer drug; 4) peptide-drug conjugates and protein-drug conjugates.

Publications

Tsung Chieh Shih

Education

PhD		University of California, Davis, USA		2011 – 2014
MS		National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan		2001 – 2003

 

Wenwu Xiao

1. Integrin targeted therapy is of great interest for the treatment and prevention of many type of cancer since integrin receptors usually are highly expressed on tumor cell surface. I have screened several cancer cells such as breast cancer, glioblastoma and lung cancer using the “one-bead one-compound” combinatorial chemistry invented by Dr. Lam two decades ago, and identified several tumor specific peptide ligands such as LXY1, LXY3, and LXY4 targeting α3β1 integrin, LXW7 targeting αvβ3 integrin. These ligands have been further optimized via structure-activity relation study to harvest higher affinity ligands LXY30 and LXW64, targeting α3β1 and αvβ3 integrin, respectively. These ligands have the ability to deliver fluorescence dye to tumor site in both orthotopic and subcutaneous xenografts mouse models, and demonstrated their potential to be developed as tumor imaging or targeting drug delivery reagents. I am the main investigator to conduct these projects with the help of chemists on beads libraries design and synthesis.

 

2. Nanotechnology has been used for improving drug delivery and treatment efficacy in a variety of diseases, including cancers. A novel nanotherapeutic platform based on three biocompatible building blocks: polyethylene glycol (PEG), cholic acid (CA, a facial amphiphilic molecule), and lysine, was invented in our laboratory. It is unique in its small size (17-60 nm), which has better tumor targeting property and drug delivery to the tumor sites through the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect compared to larger size nanoparticles. This type of nanomicelle is not toxic in vitro and in vivo, and is capable of encapsulating hydrophobic reagents such as chemotherapeutic drugs, small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors and near-infra red dye DiD. Disulfide or catechol-boronic cross linking approach were included in the system to prevent premature release of drugs during circulation due to the dissociation of the nanomicelle in the presence of lipoproteins. This nanoplatform has demonstrated superior cancer drug delivery capability. With the building blocks modified with porphyrin, its potential in photo dynamic therapy (PPT), photo thermal therapy (PTT) and multiplex imaging was further expanded. It is believed that the novel nanomicelle system would be a promising theranostic tool for cancer imaging, tumor drug delivery and therapy. I was involved in the nanoparticle related projects in our lab as a biologist to test in vitro cell toxicity, drug metabolism, in vivo targeting optical imaging and cancer therapeutic effect on animal xenografts model.