Principal Investigator & Professor

Dr. Hao Chen is a Principal Investigator, Professor, and recipient of the National Youth Talent Recruitment Program. In 2011, he was selected as one of the seven candidates for the inaugural Interdisciplinary Top Innovative Doctoral Training Program at Wuhan University. In 2014, he pursued a joint Ph.D. training program at the Molecular Imaging Center, Stanford University, USA. After completing his Ph.D., he continued as a postdoctoral researcher at the same center, focusing on the development of fluorescence and PET-CT organic small-molecule theranostic agents. He designed and synthesized the first modifiable short-wave infrared (SWIR) or near-infrared-II (NIR-II) dye, CH1055 (NIR-II or SWIR, 1000 nm–1700 nm), and pioneered its biomedical applications.

In February 2019, he joined the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica as a Group Leader, primarily engaged in the development of fluorescence/PET-CT/SPECT-CT theranostic agents and the application of molecular imaging technologies in drug development, efficacy evaluation, and pharmacokinetic studies of macromolecular drugs. With interdisciplinary expertise in medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and instrumentation, he excels in leveraging cross-disciplinary techniques to address challenges in drug development.

Since 2012, he has published over 70 academic papers, including multiple first-, co-first-, corresponding-, and co-corresponding-author publications in top-tier SCI journals such as Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Chemical Science, and Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.