CNRS Research Director

Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, Centre Interdiscipliniare de Nanoscience de Marseille, UMR 7325,

13288 Marseille

France

Group Website: https://www.cinam.univ-mrs.fr/cinam/team/immf/b-and-b/

Ling PENG obtained a D.Sc. in chemitry from Nanjing University, China in 1986 and a Ph.D. in natural science from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH-Zurich) in 1993. In the same year, she started her post-docotral research at University of Strasbourg in France. In 1997, she was recruited as a research scientist in the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS), then promoted as a CNRS Research Director in 2008, 1st class Research Director in 2015 and exceptional class Research Director in 2023

Dr. Ling PENG has been working actively at the interface of chemistry and biology, and in particular, developing functional dendrimers for biomedical applications. She has inaugurated the concept of self-assembling supramolecular dendrimers, and applied this concept to deliver various pharmaceutical agents including anticancer drugs, nucleic acid therapeutics and imaging agents for cancer detection and treatment.

Dr. Ling PENG has published over 190 peer-reviewed papers (h-index 58) and received multiple awards including the Prize of Dr & Mme Henri Labbé of the French Academy of Sciences, the Prize of André Collet in Supramolecular Chemistry of the French Chemical Society, and the Grand Prize of the French Chemical Society SUD PACA.

Representative Publications

[1]    Ni Q, Tomalia DA, Wu J, Galanakou C, Peng L, “Precision chemical engineering of dendrimers for nucleic acid delivery”, Nat. Rev. Chem. DOI: 10.1038/s41570-026-00855-2 (2026)

[2]    Liu X, Dhumal D, Santofimia-Castaño P, Liu J, Casanova M, Garcia-Muñoz AC, Perles-Barbacaru T-A, Elkihe A, Zhang W, Roussel T, Galanakou C, Wu J, Zerva E, Dusetti N, Xia Y, Liang X-J, Viola A, Iovanna JL, Peng L, “Self-assembling dendrimer nanodrug formulations for decreased hERG-related toxicity and enhanced therapeutic efficacy”, Sci. Adv. 11, eadu9948 (2025)

[3]    Lyu Z, Ralahy B, Perles-Barbacaru T-A, Ding L, Jiang Y, Lian B, Roussel T, Liu X, Galanakou C, Laurini E, Tintaru A, Giorgio S, Pricl S, Liu X, Iovanna J, Bernard M, Viola A, Peng L, “Self-assembling dendrimer nanosystems for specific fluorine magnetic resonance imaging and effective theranostic treatment of tumors”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121, e2322403121 (2024)

[4]    Chen J, Zhu D, Lian B, Shi K, Chen P, Li Y, Lin W, Ding L, Long Q, Wang Y, Laurini E, Lan W, Li Y, Tintaru A, Ju C, Zhang C, Pricl S, Iovanna J, Liu X, Peng L, “Cargo-selective and adaptive delivery of nucleic acids by bola-amphiphilic dendrimers”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2220787120 (2023)

[5]    Jiang Y, Lyu Z, Ralahy B, Liu J, Rousse T, Ding L, Tang J, Kosta A, Giorgio S, Tomasini R, Liang X-J, Dusetti N, Iovanna J, Peng L, “Dendrimer nanosystems for adaptive tumour-assisted drug delivery via extracellular vesicle hijacking”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2215308120 (2023)