The 13th Global Conference on Polymer and Composite Materials (PCM 2026)

Abstract: Currently, clinical treatment methods face several challenges, including significant side effects, labeling difficulties, postoperative recurrence, and infections. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop efficient materials for disease diagnosis and treatment. Metal nanoclusters have emerged as a promising class of nano diagnostic and therapeutic agents due to their precise and controllable structure, unique electronic, optical, and outstanding biocompatibility. Supramolecular assembly is an effective approach for developing advanced diagnostic and therapeutic agents, enabling the creation of multifunctional nanostructures for enhanced precision in disease diagnosis and treatment. By utilizing supramolecular macrocycles with unique host-guest properties, we regulated the assembly of metal nanoclusters, enabling the construction of high-performance supramolecular nanotheranostic materials. By precisely regulating surface chemistry and controlling interface assembly through a multi-level dynamic strategy, we have achieved supramolecular assembly-enhanced theranostics, including transdermal therapy of hypertrophic scarring through concurrent ferroptosis-apoptosis, in vivo supramolecular assembly-enhanced cancer theranostics and plasmon-enhanced visible-light photocatalytic antibacterial activity. Our findings offer valuable theoretical insights for the development of high-performance supramolecular nanotheranostic materials.

Keywords: Supramolecular Assembly; Macrocyclic Hosts; Host–Guest Recognition; Metal Nanoclusters; Fluorescent Probes

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U213010103, 22274131), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 2262046), Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Disciplines Breakthrough Plan of the Ministry of Education of China (No. JYB2025XDXM406), fund of the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing in NPU (No. 2026-TS-16)

Biography: Li-Li Tan is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University. She received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2016, under the supervision of Professors Xiao-An Zhang and Ying-Wei Yang at Jilin University. From 2014 to 2015, she joined Prof. Wei Zhang’s group at University of Colorado as a joint Ph.D. under support of the scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC). In 2016, she joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern Polytechnical University. In 2017 and 2018, she was selected for the Postdoctoral Innovative Talent Support Program (A) and the Young Talent Lifting Program of the Shaanxi Provincial Association for Science and Technology, respectively. She received the Second Prize of the Jilin Provincial Natural Science Academic Achievement Award (3/3) in 2015 and the First Prize of Jilin Provincial Natural Science Award (2/7) in 2019. She has been invited to serve as a young editorial board member for Chinese Chemical Letters and Supramolecular Materials. Her research focuses on the construction of novel supramolecular photofunctional materials and their applications in intelligent theranostics, adsorption and separation. To date, she has published over 60 papers in academic journals such as Adv. Mater., J. Am. Chem. Soc., ACS Nano, Adv. Funct. Mater., and Sci. Bull., including 9 ESI highly cited papers and 3 ESI hot papers. Her works have received more than 4,000 total citations, with an H‑index of 28.