A highly active catalyst capable of synthesizing drug molecules within the body has been developed by RIKEN chemists. In mice, an anticancer drug assembled near tumors using the injected catalyst suppressed tumor growth ..read more

An international team of experts undertaking fundamental research has developed a way of using polyethylene waste (PE) as a feedstock and converted it into valuable chemicals, via light-driven photocatalysis ..read more

Before researchers can develop targeted drugs, they need to know exactly how a disease works. Biochemist Bert Beerkens created molecules that allow them to find out. He used caffeine as the basis for new molecules that enable research into certain receptor proteins on cells ..read more

The building blocks for new drugs that help fight bacteria that are resistant to known antibiotics, for example, should be as cost-effective and environmentally friendly as possible. Enzymes are ideal for this purpose. For example, they can produce or combine different components of active substances ..read more

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions from lime kilns, there is a growing interest in introducing bio-based fuels as an alternative to fossil fuels. Naresh Kumar Wagri, Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, Umeå University, shows in his thesis that this presents challenges due to the different chemical and physical properties of biofuels ..read more

When Senior Scientist Jonathan Grimm came to Janelia 13 years ago, he didn't know much about fluorescence or fluorescent dyes. But as an organic chemist who had been working in drug discovery at Merck, he certainly knew a thing or two about medicinal chemistry ..read more

Antibodies (immunoglobulins) are Y-shaped proteins that recognize and neutralize specific pathogens. Their ability to target specific molecules or cells has made them promising candidates for future drug development. However, their light chains—parts of the antibody that contribute to recognizing and binding to specific antigens—misfold and aggregate, leading to amyloidosis, a condition that brings about complications and tissue dysfunction in the body ..read more

Clothing is far too valuable to simply dispose of and burn. Starting in 2025, used textiles are to be collected and recycled throughout the EU. Improved recycling processes are urgently needed to deal with the huge amount of textiles that will then be produced in an efficient and environmentally friendly way ..read more

The Chirik Group at the Princeton Department of Chemistry is chipping away at one of the great challenges of metal-catalyzed C–H functionalization with a new method that uses a cobalt catalyst to differentiate between bonds in fluoroarenes, functionalizing them based on their intrinsic electronic properties ..read more

Researchers at the Center for Development of Functional Materials (CDMF) describe in the Journal of Molecular Liquids the development of a sensor that detects metronidazole in organisms and the environment. Metronidazole is an antibiotic used in human and veterinary medicine. Accumulation of this drug in the body can result in various health problems, and levels in blood, water, meat, and milk, among others, need to be monitored ..read more