# Chemical Probes to Study Metal Biology

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY · 2021 · $398,613

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Copper is an essential metal nutrient that plays important roles in human health and disease. The potent redox
activity of copper is required for a diverse array of physiological processes including respiration, antioxidant
defense, neurotransmitter synthesis, and wound healing. However, dysregulated copper homeostasis can
contribute to metabolic diseases like obesity and diabetes as well as cancer, heart disease, and
neurodegenerative disorders, often through aberrant oxidative stress and damage pathways. To help decipher
the contributions of copper to healthy and disease states, we are developing new chemical tools to enable
copper-specific imaging in living systems across a broad range of biological models, from subcellular
compartments to cells to whole animals. The scientific premise is that building a copper imaging toolkit will
provide foundational chemical reagents to further our understanding of the roles of copper in both physiological
and pathological situations. This competitive renewal application is driven by design innovations where we
invent new generalizable, activity-based sensing platforms for copper detection, as well as scientific rigor in the
synthesis and use of multiple characterization techniques to apply these tools in cell and animal models.
Specifically, we will pursue protein-labeled copper probes to study how copper is stored, trafficked, and utilized
at the subcellular level, chemiluminescent indicators to enable dynamic and longitudinal copper imaging at the
live animal level, and studies to probe how copper contributes to managing oxidative stress in neuronal
cultures and regulating neural circuitry and behavior in zebrafish models.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10128455
- **Project number:** 5R01GM079465-16
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- **Principal Investigator:** Christopher J. Chang
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $398,613
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2006-09-25 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10128455

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10128455, Chemical Probes to Study Metal Biology (5R01GM079465-16). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10128455. Licensed CC0.

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