Title: Chelator Design Strategies and Applications for Biology and Critical Minerals
Abstract: Metal ions are essential both in biological systems, where they function as nutrients and therapeutic agents, and in the global economy, where they enable advanced technologies. Purposefully designed chelators bridge these domains by enhancing the biological performance of metal ions and by enabling the enrichment, isolation, and separation of technologically critical metals. This presentation highlights our group’s recent efforts in chelator design for these two areas. In the first part, we survey how expanded macrocyclic chelators can be engineered for nuclear medicine. Our studies show that introducing controlled flexibility into these ligands allows them to adjust their binding conformations to accommodate metal ions of varying sizes, increasing their versatility for radiometal-based applications. The second part focuses on applying this chelator class to the extraction and separation of rare earth elements, critical minerals central to modern technologies. We demonstrate how rationally tailored chelators can selectively remove and enrich rare earths from complex matrices and enable efficient interelement separations. Together, these studies illustrate how fundamental principles of coordination chemistry can be leveraged to meet distinct challenges in nuclear medicine and critical mineral processing.
Biography: Justin Wilson began his research career as an undergraduate in the lab of Prof. Jeff Long at UC Berkeley, where he investigated cyanide-bridged transition metal clusters as single-molecule magnets. After graduating in UC Berkeley with Highest Honors and the Departmental Citation in 2008, he began is PhD studies in Inorganic Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the mentorship of Prof. Stephen J. Lippard. Justin’s graduate research focused on the design and investigation of novel platinum-based anticancer drug candidates, for which he received the annual Davison Prize for best inorganic thesis. From 2013–2015, Justin was a Seaborg Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked with Dr. Eva Birnbaum on radioisotope production, separation, and ligand design. In 2015, Justin began his independent career as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, and was subsequently promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure in 2021. In 2024, Justin joined the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC Santa Barbara as a professor. His research program has been recognized by a number of awards including the Cottrell Scholar Award, the Jonathan Sessler Award for Emerging Leaders in Bioinorganic and Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry, the Ed Stiefel Young Investigator Award at the Metals in Biology Gordon Research Conference, and the National ACS Harry Gray Award for Creative Work in Inorganic Chemistry by a Young Investigator, and the Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry International Award for Creative Work.
Hosts: Owen Glaser, Georgia Sands, Patricia Armenta