He Dong
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Chemistry
Bacteria can infect body sites that are more acidic than normal, such as the urinary tract, mouth, airway lining, skin and other soft tissues. Many antibiotics work best at neutral pH, and acidic conditions can weaken them and encourage resistance.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
antimicrobial peptides
peptide self-assembly
supramolecular chemistry
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Establish acid-activated self-assembling antimicrobial nanofibers (AA-SAANs) from new pH-responsive multidomain peptides containing non-natural charged amino acids, to tune their stability and activity.
- Fabricate multicomponent AA-SAANs that combine several peptides and evaluate whether they kill bacteria more strongly together in weakly acidic conditions.
- Evaluate the pH-dependent biological activity of these peptide nanofibers in vitro, testing that they kill bacteria at acidic pH while remaining inactive at normal body pH.
More about the research
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), short protein chains that kill a broad range of bacteria and rarely trigger resistance, are a promising alternative. However, enzymes in the body break them down easily, and they can harm the body's own cells. New designs are needed to make AMPs safer and more targeted.
Why it matters
Antibiotic resistance and infections in acidic tissues, such as the urinary tract, mouth, airways and skin, are hard to treat with standard drugs. Peptide nanofibers that switch on only in acidic infection sites could lead to antimicrobial therapies that kill resistant bacteria while sparing healthy tissue. The design principles could also help create other materials that respond to pH changes in biological systems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jeffrey Tabor
Rice University, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how two Bacillus subtilis stress-response gene networks decode time-varying activity of their main transcription factors, using an optogenetic system to deliver constant or oscillatory light inputs.
Kraig Wheeler
Whitworth University, WA·Chemistry
Synthesize families of acyclic and cyclic dipeptides and extended peptides by solid-phase peptide synthesis, systematically varying molecular shape and pendant functional groups.
Jeannine Coburn
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Generate optically transparent insoluble exopolysaccharides from Komagataeibacter bacteria and characterize them from the molecular to the bulk scale for use as see-through wound dressings.
The school
University of Texas at Arlington: 11 labs on PI Pages, $154M a year on research, 177 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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