CBM Seminar Series: Structure-based Design of an α-synuclein PET Tracer for clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease

The College of Biomedicine was pleased to host Professor Cong Liu from the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as a distinguished speaker in the CBM Seminar Series on 3 November 2025. Professor Liu’s research focuses on protein phase separation and the pathological aggregation of amyloid proteins in neurodegenerative diseases. Throughout his career, he has made systematic contributions to understanding the structural mechanisms underlying disease-associated protein aggregation and advancing small-molecule strategies for therapeutic intervention. He has published extensively, including papers in Cell, Science, PNAS, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, and Nature Chemical Biology.

In his talk, titled “Structure-based design of an α-synuclein PET tracer for clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease,” Professor Liu presented his team’s work spanning the structural diversity analysis of α-synuclein fibrils, early Parkinson’s diagnosis, and structure-based drug screening. His group successfully designed a novel PET imaging tracer that selectively binds to pathological α-synuclein fibrils with clinical-level accuracy. This development represents a significant step toward enabling earlier and more accurate clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, with meaningful implications for disease monitoring and therapeutic development. The seminar stimulated active discussion and highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing major neurological disorders.