Prof. Rong Tian’s research team of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, West China Hospital has cooperated with Prof. Yiwen Li and Prof. Zhipeng Gu of the College of Polymer Science and Engineering and conducted a series of research on medical diagnostic and therapeutic materials based on polyphenolic materials in recent years.

Lately, the team was invited to publish a review entitled "Versatile Polyphenolic Platforms in Regulating Cell Biology" in Chemical Society Reviews, systematically summarizing the construction of polyphenolic materials and their research progress in biomedicine. The first author is Huan Cao, a postdoctoral fellow of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, WCH, and Yiwen Li is the corresponding author.

“Polyphenolic materials are a class of fascinating and versatile bioinspired materials for biointerfacial engineering. In particular, due to the presence of active chemical groups, a series of unique physicochemical properties become accessible and tunable of the as-prepared polyphenolic platforms, which could delicately regulate the cell activities via cell–material contact-dependent interactions. More interestingly, polyphenols could also affect the cell behaviors via cell–material contact-independent manner, which arise due to their intrinsically functional characteristics (e.g., antioxidant and photothermal behaviors). --- In this review, we firstly give a brief overview of cell hallmarks governed by surrounding cues, followed by the introduction of polyphenolic material engineering strategies. Subsequently, a detailed discussion on cell–polyphenols contact-dependent interfacial interaction and contact-independent interaction was also carefully provided. Lastly, their biomedical applications were elaborated. We believe that this review could provide guidances for the rational material design of multifunctional polyphenols and extend their application window.” (Abstract)

https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CS01165K