The research team from the Faculty of Environment and Life Sciences of BJUT has made significant headway in the precise construction of artificial metalloenzyme and diagnosis and treatment of tumors. The research titled“An Artificial Metalloenzyme for Catalytic Cancer-specific DNA Cleavage and Operando Imaging”is published on Science Advances(SCI, IF =13.116, JCR, Tier 1 (ca. top) in CAS journal ranking system).Associate Professor Gao Liang of the Faculty of Environment and Life Sciences is the first author of this article, and Professor Gao Xueyun is the correspondence author.

The research exquisitely constructed an artificial metalloenzyme with copper clusters as its active center in the cavity of natural protein, which can consistently, stably and selectively catalyze the overexpressed hydrogen peroxide into hydroxyl radicals and oxygen in the tumor microenvironment. The generated hydroxyl radicals continuously cleave the DNA of tumor cells to achieve efficient tumor treatment, and also it can catalyzepersistent chemiluminescence imaging to track the therapeutic effect of tumor in real time. This work simulates natural enzymes from the perspective of structure and functionand provides a new biochemical reaction pathway by using the unique catalytic kinetics and stability of metal clusters, which delivers new insights to visually monitor and efficiently combat specific cancers.

Link：https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/29/eabb1421