Jinchao Lou, Assistant Professor
Dr. Jinchao Lou will join the University of Mississippi Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry on August 1st. Dr. Lou received her Bachelor of Science from Northwest Normal University, China, in 2016, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry from the University of Tennessee in 2022. She then served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee before joining the faculty at UM. Her interests center around bio-organic chemistry, chemical biology, nanomaterials, drug delivery, and synthetic organic chemistry.
The emerging fields of nanomedicine and biomaterials have the potential to significantly impact human health by improving the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases. However, despite significant attention and investment, the clinical adoption of nanoparticle-based therapeutic and imaging agents faces substantial biological, immunological, and translational challenges. Dr. Lou’s research group aims to address these critical challenges in nanomedicine and biomaterials by developing responsive materials that can effectively navigate complex biological environments through organic chemistry approaches. She strives to contribute significantly to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, ultimately improving human health and well-being. Dr. Lou’s research interests include 1) developing multi-stimuli-responsive peptide-based programmable materials to enhance the responsiveness and target specificity of nanomedicine; 2) creating short and ultrashort peptide small molecule materials that have the unique property of self-assembling in situ upon exposure to specific stimuli, thereby amplifying nanomedicine tissue penetration ability; and 3) developing chemical biology tools to better understand peptidoglycan synthesis in various bacteria cells, ultimately aiming to improve the efficacy of bacteria-targeted therapeutics.