Personal Information and Interests

Education:
B.S. Chemical Engineering
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 2003

Academic Interests

Research Interests: Experimental and molecular simulation studies on the oxidation of therapeutic protein
Thesis Advisors: Daniel I. C. Wang and Bernhardt L. Trout

Research Description

The objective of the study on the methionine sites oxidation in therapeutic protein is trying to establish the connection between the long-term oxidation under storage condition and the short-term accelerated oxidations such as the presence of hydrogen peroxide or/and elevated temperature. Unlike the chemical reactions in small molecular system, the structure of macromolecules such as protein will affect the reaction kinetics as observed experimentally. We hope that a reliable way of predicting the shelf-life against oxidation of protein therapeutics can be developed through the structure-kinetics relation analysis.

Using nowadays computational tools, the molecular modeling methods (such as Molecular Dynamics, combined Quantum Mechanical and Molecular Mechanical simulations etc.) can provide us more insight and detailed fundamentals about the chemical reaction occurring in condensed systems. The combination of experimental study and the molecular modeling on protein oxidation can give an answer to the interesting biochemistry problem, i.e. what is the temperature-dependence of reaction rate constant in macromolecular system, hopefully at the final stage of this project.