Bio: Professor Zhao is a Distinguished Professor and an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He currently serves as the President of the Chinese Society for Biomaterials, the President of the GBA National Institute for Nanotechnology Innovation (CanNano), and the Director of the Key Laboratory for Nanotechnology Products Evaluation and Regulation under the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA, China’s FDA). Professor Zhao is a pioneer in nanotoxicology research, focusing on the toxicological chemistry of nano-biomaterials. His work aims to elucidate how engineered nano-biomaterials, at the nanoscale, interact with cells, tissues, and biomolecules, and how these interactions translate into biological effects in vivo. He has published 659 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, with over 85,000 citations and an H-index of 153 (Google Scholar). He is the author of Nanotoxicology, the first global textbook on the subject, published in the United States in 2007. From 2006 to 2010, he led a team of experts from 16 universities to develop a comprehensive 10-volume book series on nanotoxicology. This seminal work has significantly advanced the understanding of nanomaterial safety and played a pivotal role in shaping evaluation protocols, particularly in facilitating the regulatory approval of nanomedicine and nano-device products by the NMPA (China’s FDA).

Abstract: Nanotoxicology integrates fundamental chemical principles with biological insights to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the toxicological effects of materials at the nanoscale. As a rapidly evolving frontier in toxicology, nanotoxicology has reshaped our understanding of toxicity, with broad implications across toxicology, biomaterials, medicine, and drug delivery. Over the past two decades, our research has uncovered pivotal phenomena—including size-dependent toxicity, protein corona formation, the stealth effect, and the far-reaching effect—that have redefined the paradigms of nanomaterial safety assessment and the rational design of functional nanomaterials. This presentation aims to expand the boundaries of classical toxicology by addressing the mechanisms underlying nanotoxicological phenomena, with a focus on how nano-factors such as nano-sizes, nano-shapes, nano-surface (like surface defects electron transfer dynamics at nano–bio interfaces), AI-assisted theoretical modeling, proposing and experimentally validating a comprehensive theoretical framework for nanotoxicology. This work seeks to redefine nanotoxicological principles, fostering safer biomedical nanomaterials by rational design to advance next-generation nanomedicines and biomedical applications.