Investigator, Asst Prof (M) Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, Mass General Research Institute

Assistant Professor of Radiology Harvard Medical School

atherosclerotic inflammation; drug delivery systems; nanobiotechnology; nanomedicine; plasmonics

Dr. Homan Kang is a faculty member at the Center for Inflammation Imaging of Mass General Research Institute and Harvard Medical School. He completed his education with a double major in Polymer Science and Engineering/Nanoscience and Technology at Dankook University, South Korea, and obtained his Ph.D. in Nano-Science and Technology from Seoul National University in 2014 (Supervisor: Prof. Yoon-Sik Lee). His research interests at Harvard Medical School center around understanding in vivo transport and nano-bio interactions of theranostic nanoparticles (NPs) for diagnosing, staging, and treating diseases. He has a diverse background in nanomedicine and drug delivery, contributing original ideas for biomedical applications. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, working with our collaborator Dr. Jean-Luc Coll (Program Director of Cancer Targets and Experimental Therapeutics) at the University of Grenoble-Alpes in France, Dr. Kang developed renal clearable organic nanocarriers for targeting and delivering drugs to gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). His work defined essential characteristics such as hydrodynamic diameter, surface charges, mass-to-charge ratio, and elimination kinetics, which are crucial for nanoparticles to be eliminated through renal clearance. These findings, published in top-ranked materials chemistry journals (Advanced Materials, 2016 and 2020; Nano Today, 2018), significantly influenced the design of biocompatible delivery vehicles for anticancer drugs. After he took a faculty position at MGH, in collaboration with Dr. Jonghan Kim at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, he investigated the relationship between the size, charge, lipophilicity, and pharmacokinetics of nanoparticles for iron chelation therapy. This research led to the development of ultrasmall iron nanochelators capable of efficiently capturing iron from the body without dispersing into off-target tissues, thus facilitating urinary excretion (Nature Communications, 2019). These nanochelators exhibit rapid distribution into deep target tissues, strong binding to free iron in blood and tissues, and quick excretion through the urinary bladder without redistribution.
Recently, I proposed a novel tumor-targeting strategy based on immune cell–mediated accumulation of near-infrared (NIR) fluorophores in the tumor microenvironment. This strategy, published in Advanced Materials (2022), demonstrated that heptamethine cyanine fluorophores can be selectively taken up by bone-marrow-derived and/or tissue-resident immune cells—including tumor-associated macrophages—which subsequently migrate to tumor sites. This immune-cell-mediated targeting enables noninvasive NIR-II fluorescence imaging across multiple tumor types, including pancreatic, breast, and lung cancers, and opens the door for developing next-generation theranostic platforms.
In parallel, I developed a cartilage-targeting NIR fluorophore for early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which was reported in Chem (2025). This fluorophore enables high-specificity imaging of cartilage in the NIR-II window while maintaining minimal background signal and low toxicity. These cartilage-targeting probes offer strong translational potential as diagnostic tools for early-stage arthritis, and may support future applications in joint surgery, tissue engineering, and inflammatory disease therapeutics.