Eszter Boros
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Chemistry·Early-career
Metals do far more in medicine than most people realize. Radioactive metals can light up tumors in scans or deliver radiation to kill cancer cells, glowing metal complexes can reveal processes inside the body, and look-alike metals can trick bacteria into absorbing toxic substitutes for iron.
- Fields
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
lanthanide complexes
europium
terbium
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Design terbium and europium complexes, guided by density functional theory, that carry built-in Cherenkov-emitting radiolabels, and test whether they can image specific cell-surface receptors in cells.
- Synthesize self-illuminating europium(III) chelates powered by Cherenkov radiation energy transfer, and develop europium(II) complexes with tunable ligand fields for bright red light suited to biological imaging.
- Identify linkage strategies to attach cancer-targeting peptides to chelators for the fluorine-18, scandium-44, yttrium-86, lutetium-177 and terbium-161 theranostic pentad without disrupting radiolabeling.
- Build a photochemical solid-phase radiosynthesis platform for ready-to-inject radiopharmaceuticals and use self-immolative amide bonds to tune pharmacokinetics, testing in mouse cancer models.
- Determine whether gallium, scandium and indium complexes of bacterial iron-grabbing metallophores are recognized and transported, using speciation studies and photoreactive tagging of transport proteins.
- Track xenometal release and fate inside bacteria with radiochemical labeling and mass spectrometry, identifying target proteins and changes in bacterial metabolism.
More about the research
This research uses coordination chemistry, the design of molecules that tightly grip metal ions, to control how metals behave in living systems. Its projects cover light-emitting probes powered by radioactivity, chelators (metal-gripping molecules) for cancer-imaging and cancer-treating radioisotopes, and the fate of iron-mimicking metals inside bacteria.
Why it matters
Cancer patients could benefit from radiopharmaceuticals that are simpler to prepare in kit form and whose diagnostic scans better predict therapy dosing, as well as from optical probes that detect small tumors deep in tissue. Understanding how gallium, scandium and indium disrupt bacterial iron uptake may also inform alternative antibiotics against pathogens.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gary Guillet
Furman University, SC·Chemistry
Test whether ligands built on a C3-symmetric scaffold, which holds all the metal-binding atoms in one molecule, stabilize three-atom iron and cobalt chain (EMAC) complexes better than three separate bulky bridging ligands.
Justin Caram
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Chemistry
Determine how ligand symmetry, denticity and electronic structure control the linewidths and oscillator strengths of f-to-f transitions in lanthanide complexes, starting with ytterbium compounds.
Christopher Graves
Swarthmore College, PA·Chemistry
Synthesize group 13 metal complexes (boron, aluminum, gallium, indium) of tripodal nitroxide ligands, (RTriNOx3–)M, with systematically varied electron-donating and electron-withdrawing substituents.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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