Our research group is primarily focused in the interdisciplinary study of chemistry and biology. We are especially interested in xeno-nucleic acid (XNA, or unnatural nucleic acid) chemical biology and synthetic biology. In our laboratory we develop various functional unnatural nucleic acids such as aptamers, deoxyribozymes and siRNAs and explore their potential applications in fields like cancer immunotherapy, targeted therapy and gene therapy. Furthermore, we also explore the potentials of XNA to act as genetic materials and construct semi-synthetic life forms carrying unnatural base pairs.
The research work in our group has been published in prestigious journals such as Nature Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Chemical Science, Chemical Communications and ACS Applied Materials & interfaces.
