Photochemical detection of metal ions and complexes for diagnostic and therapy

 

Photochemical detection of metal ions and complexes for diagnostic and therapy

 

Date: 27^thNovember, 2025 (Thursday)

Time: 5:30 - 6:30 pm (HKT)

 

Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, K.K. Leung Building

 

Prof. Sylvestre Bonnet

 

Leiden Institute of Chemistry,
Leiden University, The Netherlands

 

Sylvestre Bonnet is Full Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Leiden University. He obtained his PhD in 2005 at the University of Strasbourg, France, in the group of Nobel Laureate Jean-Pierre Sauvage. He then moved to The Netherlands as a postdoc, where he successively worked in the groups of Gerard van Koten (Utrecht), Jan Reedijk (Leiden), and Antoinette Killian and Bert Klein Gebbink (Utrecht). Between 2009 and 2014 he completed a Tenure Track position in Inorganic Chemistry at Leiden University, where he was tenured in 2015 and became full professor in 2020. He obtained several prestigious grants, including a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (2013), a Transition grant from the European Innovation Council (2023), and three young investigator grants (VENI 2008, VIDI 2012, VICI 2019) from the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). He is alumni of the Young Academy of Europe, of which he was a board member (2017-2020). His expertise lies at the crossing point between bioinorganic chemistry, photochemistry, and lipid membranes. His current research interests are anticancer photoactivated chemotherapy, supramolecular photocatalysis, and upconversion.

 

Some metal ions such as Ca²⁺ are essential to health but difficult to observe in biological systems. One needs innovative photochemical methods to highlight their presence or quantify their concentration, which may reveal sickness. Other metal ions such as Ru²⁺ can be introduced in the body in the form of a complex, for example for photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT), to treat cancer. But ruthenium compounds used in PACT are not emissive, and it is difficult to follow them in cells and organisms. Overall, following the fate of metal ions and complexes in biological system is essential to understand and control their role in health. In this presentation, I will present two stories. In the first one, Ca²⁺ ions are imaged via an upconversion system in the context of endothelial disfunction, a reversible and early form of vasculatory diseases. In the second story, I will describe how to use coordination chemistry and click chemistry to image “invisible” ruthenium-based photoactivated chemotherapy prodrugs in vitro and in vivo.

 

[1] V. D. Andreeva, I. Regeni, T. Yang, A. Elmanova, M. Presselt, B. Dietzek-Ivanšić, S. Bonnet J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2024, 15, 7430.

 

[2] L. Zhang, G. Zhao, T. Dalrymple, Y. Husiev, H. Bronkhorst, G. Forn-Cuní, B. Lopes-Bastos, E. Snaar-Jagalska, S. Bonnet ACS Central Science 2024, 10, 2294.

 

[3] L. Zhang, P. Wang, H. Bronkhorst, Y. Husiev, L. Bretin, M. N. van Ginkel , W. Sun, S. Bonnet Adv. Healthcare Mater. 2025, DOI: 10.1002/adhm.202502174.