Latest ArticlesThe metal-free S–S bond exchange reaction of symmetrical disulfides catalyzed by NFSI is described. This novel protocol provides a facile and efficient approach to accessing important unsymmetrical disulfides. Furthermore, this strategy could also be utilized in the late-stage functionalization of amino acids, drugs, and natural products. The broad substrate scope, good functional group tolerance and easy accessibility of catalyst indicate that this strategy affords a green and practical complementary method to various unsymmetrical disulfides.
Nanoscale metal organic frameworks (NMOFs) have been widely reported in biomedical field for their unique porous structure and tunable multifunctionality. However, when administrated in vivo, the protein corona will be formed on the surface of NMOFs, significantly affecting their biodistribution, pharmacokinetics and drug release. Few studies paid attention to the protein corona formation process and its influencing factors of NMOFs. As a well-established strategy for altering structure features of NMOFs, the organic ligand modification may have effect on the protein corona formation process, which is to be investigated. In this study, the zirconium (Zr)-based UIO66 was chosen as model NMOFs, the organic ligand of which was modified with amino group (-NH2) or carboxyl group (-COOH) to synthesize UIO66-NH2 and UIO66-2COOH, respectively. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was chosen as model protein to investigate the protein corona formation process of NMOFs. The current results showed that the -COOH modification remarkably enhanced the BSA adsorption on NMOFs while -NH2 slightly decreased the protein binding affinity. These differences may be ascribed to the two different dominate protein corona formation modes, i.e., surface coating mode and porous embedded mode. The protein corona formation did not affect the crystal phase of NMOFs but increased the content of α-helix of BSA. Ultimately, upon protein corona formation, the cellular uptake of NMOFs was significantly affected. We believe our study will provide a new research paradigm to the design and applications of NMOFs.
Solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) with high ionic conductivity, mechanical stability, and high thermal stability, as well as the stringent requirement of application in high-temperature fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries is receiving increasing attention. Polymer nanocomposites (PNCs), combining the advantages of inorganic materials with those of polymeric materials, offer numerous opportunities for SSEs design. In this work, we report a facile and general one-pot approach based on polymerization-induced microphase separation (PIMS) to generate PNCs with bi-continuous microphases. This synthetic strategy transforms a homogeneous liquid precursor consisting of polyoxometalates (POMs, H3PW12O40, Li7[V15O36(CO3)]), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) macro-chain-transfer agent, styrene and divinylbenzene monomers, into a robust and transparent monolith. The resulting POMs are uniformly dispersed in the PEG block (PEG/POM) to form a conducting pathway that successfully realizes the effective transfer of protons and lithium ions, while the highly cross-linked polystyrene domains (P(S-co-DVB)) as mechanical support provide outstanding mechanical properties and thermal stability. As the POM loading ratio up to 35 wt%, the proton conductivity of nanocomposite reaches as high as 5.99 × 10-4 S/cm at 100 ℃ in anhydrous environment, which effectively promotes proton transfer under extreme environments. This study broadens the application of fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries in extreme environments.
Photo-assisted electrochemical technique provides a promising approach towards carcinogen chromium(Ⅵ) detection, which requires reasonable catalyst design. Herein, an unusual hexa-nuclear cadmium cluster functionalized reductive phosphomolybdate hybrid as photo-electrochemical sensor was designed and synthesized with formula of {[Cd(H2O)2]2[Cd(btmbp)]2}{Cd(P4Mo6O31H7)2}·20H2O (1) (btmbp= 4,4′-bis((1H-1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)methyl)biphenyl), in which the photoactive hexa-nuclear {Cd6} clusters cooperated with reductive phosphomolybdate [P4Mo6O31]12− endow the material with wide light absorption and remarkable redox activity, thus achieving efficient photo-assisted electrochemical Cr(Ⅵ) detection performance. Under visible-light assistance, the detection limit (LOD) and sensitivity of Cr(Ⅵ) is 4.17 nmol/L (0.225 ppb) and 226.32 µA L/µmol, which is apparently superior to the performance without photo-assistance (6.25 nmol/L and 106.95 µA L/µmol) and far satisfies the demands of world health organization (WHO) for potable water (50 ppb). Moreover, compound 1 showed prominent Cr(Ⅵ) detection performance in practical water samples together with remarkable anti-interference capacity and good electrochemical durability. This work provides an important guidance for designing efficient polyoxometalate-based crystalline sensors for Cr(Ⅵ) detection.
Since antigen and adjuvant are rapid clearance in vivo, insufficient delivery to induce dendritic cells (DCs) maturation and cross-presentation, as well as limited migration efficiency of DCs to secondary lymph organs, greatly hinders the development of DCs-based immunotherapy. Herein, PCL-PEG-PCL polymersomes (PCEP-PS) as antigen and adjuvants delivery nanoplatforms (IMO-PS) were well-designed, which can electrostatically adsorb OVA antigen on the surface via DOTAP lipid and effectively encapsulate OVA antigen into the inner hydrophilic cavity to achieve both initial antigen exposure as well as slow and sustained antigen release, incorporate MPLA within the lipid layer to ligate with extracellular TLR4 of DCs as well as encapsulate IMQ in the hydrophobic membrane to ligate with intracellular TLR7/8 of DCs for activating synergistic immune responses via different signaling pathways. The IMO-PS significantly improved antigen uptake, promoted DCs maturation and cytokines production. DCs treated with IMO-PS could enhance migration into draining lymphoid nodes, and eventually induced antigen-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses and OVA-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. Prophylactic vaccination of EG7-OVA tumor-bearing mice by IMO-PS + DCs significantly extended tumor-free time, effectively suppressed tumor growth, and greatly extended median survival time. The strategy may provide an effective nanoplatform for co-delivery antigen and dual-adjuvants in a spatio-temporally programmed manner for DC-based cancer immunotherapy.
A novel Diels-Alder adduct possesses a 6/6/6/5/6/6/6/6 octacyclic skeleton featured with bicyclo[2.2.2]octane moiety, biseupyiheoid A (1), along with another decacyclic 6/6/6/3/5/6/5/6/6/6 fused diterpenoid dimer, bisfischoid C (2), were isolated from Euphorbia fischeriana. Their structures were determined by spectroscopic, X-ray crystallographic approaches, and quantum mechanical calculations. The structural features of 1 and 2 were hypothesized to involve intramolecular Diels-Alder reactions with different coupling patterns. Dimer 1 showed antiproliferative activity through apoptosis activation in LoVo cells.
Herein we presented a general strategy for in situ assembly of intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT)-based light-up fluorophores via bioorthogonal Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction. By introducing iodo group at the appropriate position, five fluorophores with different scaffolds including naphthalimide, coumarin, naphthalene sulfonate, nitrobenzoxadiazole, and acetonaphthone, were designed as bioorthogonal multicolor fluorogenic probes, which could produce significant fluorescence enhancement and high fluorescence quantum yield after Suzuki-Miyaura reaction with aryl boronic acid or boronate. Manipulating the substituents and π scaffold in the fluorophores allows fine-tuning of their photophysical properties. With this strategy, we succeeded in peptide conjugation, no-wash fluorogenic protein labeling, and mitochondria-selective bioorthogonal imaging in live cells.
Guided by MS/MS molecular networks strategy, chlospicenes A and B (1 and 2), the first example of cyclopropane moiety cracked lindenane sesquiterpene Michael addition dimers, along with their biogenetic analogues (3 and 4), were targetedly discovered from the roots of Chloranthus henryi. Their structures including absolute configurations were characterized by NMR, ECD and X-ray diffraction analysis. The plausible biogenic pathway speculation indicated that cyclopropylcarbinyl rearrangement may dominate the key crack of cyclopropane moiety. In addition, compounds 1 and 2 showed significant anti-nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) activity in free fatty acid (FFA)-induced HepG2 cells by decreasing intracellular lipid accumulation.
Rational design and building of high efficiency, secure and inexpensive electrocatalyst is a pressing demand and performance to promote sustainable improvement of hydrogen energy. The bifunctional electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution response (HER) with high catalytic performance and steadiness in the equal electrolyte are extra treasured and meaningful. Herein, a unique three-dimensional (3D) structure electrocatalyst for NiCo2S4 growing on the flower-like NiFeP was designed and synthesized in this study. The results show that the flower-like NiCo2S4/NiFeP/NF composite electrocatalyst has large specific surface area, appropriate electrical conductivity, and greater lively websites uncovered in the three-dimensional structure, and affords extraordinary electrocatalytic overall performance for the ordinary water splitting. In alkaline solution, the OER and HER overpotentials of NiCo2S4/NiFeP/NF only need 293 mV and 205 mV overpotential to provide the current densities of 100 mA/cm2 and 50 mA/cm2, respectively. This high electrocatalytic activity exceeds the catalytic activity of most nickel-iron based electrocatalysts for OER and HER process. Accordingly, the optimized NiCo2S4/NiFeP/NF sample has higher stability (24 h) at 1.560 and 10 mA/cm2, which extensively speeds up the overall water splitting process. In view of the above performance, this work offers a fine approach for the further improvement of low fee and excessive effectivity electrocatalyst.
Luminescent metal organic cages (MOCs) have attracted great interest as a unique class of sensing substrates. In this work, intrinsically fluorescent Zr-MOCs were successfully used as fluorescent probes for the sensitive and selective detection of phosphate anions in water and real samples. When the ligand and Zr ion clusters form a cage, the intrinsic fluorescence of the ligand was tuned from high to weak emission due to the ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) effect, and this weakened fluorescence can be restored by the addition of phosphate. The degree of fluorescence enhancement is positively correlated with the added phosphate concentration, and the efficacy of this strategy is demonstrated by a linear phosphate detection range of 5–500 µmol/L and a detection limit of 1.06 µmol/L. We discuss the interaction between phosphate and Zr in scattering spectrum and MS, respectively. In comparison to phosphate adsorption on Zr-metal organic frameworks (MOFs), where phosphate connects different numbers of cages, both blocking the LMCT effect and causing the cages to aggregate. We also found that the phosphate displaces the ligand from the cage when the phosphate concentration is further expanded, resulting in the formation of new derivatives. This derivative was shown to be useful as a Lewis acid catalyst and as a rare earth ion adsorbent.