Richard Zare

Richard N. Zare, PhD, Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science; Professor, Department of Chemistry; Professor, Department of Physics; Stanford University School of Humanities & Sciences

Research Description: Professor Zare has a longstanding interest in physical and analytical chemistry. He is especially interested in applying cutting edge physical and chemical techniques to solve biological medical problems. He is probably best known for first introducing laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), which has proven to be so powerful in biochemical research from cell sorting to single-molecule detection to super high- resolution microscopy to sequencing the human genome. His laboratory has pioneered the development of several biologically relevant novel techniques, including the design of hybrid protein-polymer nanoparticles for drug delivery, cell sorting with cell-imprinting, single-cell microfluidics, and single-molecule spectroscopy. He has also developed conducting polymer nanoparticles for electroresponsive drug delivery, virus- or cell- imprinted protocols and several new mass spectrometric techniques including two-step laser mass spectrometry, Hadamard transform time-of-flight mass spectrometry, etc. They have developed polymeric drug nanoparticles that successfully release therapeutic payload as the result of external stimuli, and/or capable to deliver drugs in vivo to elicit targeted therapeutic effect.  

Recently, his lab developed ambient ionization techniques in which the ionization step is done outside the vacuum environment of the mass spectrometer in open air at room temperature. By bombarding a tissue sample with droplets of a 1:1 mixture of acetonitrile and dimethyl-formamide lipids are dissolved and transported to the heated entrance of a mass spectrometer for chemical analysis. Currently, his group is recipient of the SDRC Pilot & Feasibility award. His group is using their novel technology for developing and optimizing a beta cell targeted delivery module in collaboration with Justin Annes. This work will additionally take advantage of expertise and advice from the SDRC Islet Research Core. This research focus demonstrates the success of the SDRC mission to recruit established investigators to diabetes research through its P&F program, research cores and scientific outreach. 

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Neumann SE, Chamberlayne CF, Zare RN. Electrically controlled drug release using pH-sensitive polymer films. Nanoscale. 2018 May 31;10(21):10087-10093. doi: 10.1039/c8nr02602e. PMID: 29781009; PMCID: PMC5982596. 

  2. Samanta D, Hosseini-Nassab N, McCarty AD, Zare RN. Ultra-low voltage triggered release of an anti-cancer drug from polypyrrole nanoparticles. Nanoscale. 2018 May 24;10(20):9773-9779. doi: 10.1039/c8nr01259h. PMID: 29767192. 

  3. Hosseini-Nassab N, Samanta D, Abdolazimi Y, Annes JP, Zare RN. Electrically controlled release of insulin using polypyrrole nanoparticles. Nanoscale. 2017 Jan 7;9(1):143-149. doi: 10.1039/c6nr08288b. PMID: 27929180; PMCID: PMC5215613. 

  4. Song X, Yang X, Narayanan, Shankar V, Ethiraj S, Wang X, Duan N, Ni Y-H, Hu Q, Zare RN. Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Diagnosed from Saliva Metabolic Profiling, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA) 117, 16167–16173 (2020). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2001395117.