Lu Research Group

June 2023
Three graduate students successfully defended their PHD theses on May 27th.
Dr. Zhang Zhengchu, Class of 2017, will continue his postdoc research in the group.
Dr. Lu Jianhua (Excellent PhD thesis of PKU) and Dr. Zhang Yi, Class of 2018, will join Dalian Changfeng as a scientist and Jiangsu Xishan Senior High School as a teacher.

Ji Yulong, Class of 2019, received his B.S. degree in chemistry and will pursue PhD in the University of Tokyo at Japan.

We wish all of them great success in their new journey.

May 2023

In the search for synthetic mimics of proteins, we developed a high-throughput platform utilizing the unique chemistry of selenolate on the side chain of synthetic polypeptides. The method is amenable to automation and with the assists of machine learning, functional polypeptides with desired catalytic activity were identified at an much improved rate and efficiency. Check out the study at [LINK]; please also check out the News covering the story by Nat. Synth. [Link]

Jan. 2023
Dr. Wei Xiong, once a PhD student and then a postdoc of the Lu group, finishes his 8-year journey at PKU. He will join Prof. Gutekunst' group as a postdoc at Georgia Tech. We sincerely thank him for his dedication and contribution to the group, and wish him all the best and continous success in his new role.

Oct. 2022
Fall is in town! The Lu lab went out for a hiking on the west moutain trail, a 8 km track built mostly by wooden trestle and with a gorgeous scene overseeing the beautiful Yanqi Lake and City Huairou.

Sept. 2022
Our 5th year student Lu Jianhua was awarded the prestigious 2022 ChemStar Award of CCME based on her recent work reporting an interesting aggregation-induce polymerization concept which enabled the synthesis of protein-polydisulfide conjugates under mild conditions. This is her second ChemStar Award after she won the same award first in 2020, great job!

May 24th 2022
Big congratulations to Jialing, who successfully defended her PhD thesis on May 24th. Her research focuses on investigating the long term biosafety and the origin of low immunogenicity of polypeptide-protein conjugates. We  will miss her and wish her all the best in the future.

May 2022

This month, we say goodbye to beloved Guangqi, who finished his 7-year journey as a PhD student from 2015 to 2020 and then a postdoc from 2020 to 2022 in the Lu lab. Guangqi will join Dr. Coley's group at MIT as a postdoc soon. We thank him for his time, service, and legacy, and wish him all the best in his new adventure.

Mar. 2022

In this work, we reported the unexpected water-assisted controlled ROP of ProNCA, which affords well-defined PLP as polyproline II helices in 2-5 minutes and almost quantitative yields. Well done, Yali!

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwac033/6535632

Mar. 2022

In this work, we reviewed the state-of-the-art progresses of α-helical polypeptides for biomedical applications, with a special emphasis on the manipulation of helix-to-coil dynamic transition, conformation-associated anti-biofouling coatings, cellular uptake regulation, and reducing immunogenicity of polypeptide-protein conjugates. Well done, Zhang Chong!

http://www.cjps.org/article/doi/10.1007/s10118-022-2688-2?pageType=en

Oct. 2021

In this work, we developed a moisture-tolerant method enabling the facile synthesis of various challenging amino acid N-carboxyanhydrides, which could eventually greatly facilitate polypeptide preparation. Well done, Ziyou!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25689-y