Welch Foundation supports UTA’s drug delivery innovations – News Center – The University of Texas at Arlington – uta.edu

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Tuesday, Jul 02, 2024 Katherine Egan Bennett : contact

With a $300,000 grant, the Welch Foundation is supporting University of Texas at Arlington research into creating new materials to safely and effectively deliver medications to treat diseases such as cancer.

Since its founding in 1954, the Houston-based Welch Foundation has contributed over $1.1 billion to the advancement of chemistry through research grants, departmental programs, endowed chairs and other special projects in Texas.

As one of the nations largest private funding sources for chemical research, we are committed to supporting the field in a way that advances science while changing lives, said Adam Kuspa, president of the foundation. Medications can only be so effective at treating diseases if we cant get them to the parts of the body that need them most. I look forward to seeing how Dr. Junha Jeons research can help advance and improve drug production so we can improve lives.

Junha Jeon, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UTA, is leading the project to study arynes, a chemical compound formed by removing two hydrogen atoms from benzene. Although scientists have known about arynes for more than 100 years, they only recently discovered that the compounds have a unique ability to deliver antibiotics and anti-tumor medications.

Im honored that the Welch Foundation sees the value in supporting our research, Dr. Jeon said. Worldwide, an estimated 2 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year, and about one in five people will develop cancer at some time during their lifetime. Im proud we can research new ways to improve outcomes for people living with cancer and other diseases.

The transition metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction is one of the most widely used and powerful tools in organic synthesisthe art and science of reconstructing substances in the lab. This technique is extensively used to establish crucial chemical bonds and produce biomedical molecules necessary in modern medicine. Currently, most drugs use transition metal catalysts to deliver medications. However, metals often leave impurities that can lead to side effects from otherwise beneficial medications.

Little is known about widely available transition metal-free cross-coupling, especially one that can be used to deliver medicines. The overarching goal of this project is to develop sustainable transition metal-free cross-coupling technologies using arynes. Chemically speaking, arynes are short-lived intermediates holding a functional group with an extremely strained triple bond into a small ring. The strain-driven reactivity of the arynes makes them very useful for the development of cross-coupling reactions.

Uncovering this new sustainable aryne-forming strategy without using a transition metal catalyst will be valuable for various areas of research, including the production of drugs, said Jeon. Im grateful to the support of the Welch Foundation for our research project.

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Welch Foundation supports UTA's drug delivery innovations - News Center - The University of Texas at Arlington - uta.edu

Chemical Clues: Real-time Forensic Analysis of Drugs and Explosives – AZoM

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From PittconReviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Jul 1 2024

In this interview conducted at Pittcon 2024 in San Diego, we spoke to Professor Arian van Asten about advancements in the chemical analysis of drugs and explosives using portable NIR spectroscopy and its significant impact on improving on-scene investigation methods for law enforcement agencies.

My name is Arian van Asten. I am a professor of forensic analytical chemistry at the Van 't Hoff Institute of Molecular Sciences of the University of Amsterdam. Before that, I worked for a long time at the Netherlands Forensic Institute.

I have a PhD in analytical chemistry and a passion for forensic science. I am involved in many different projects focusing on a wide array of evidence materials and analysis methods, but my special interest is in the analysis of drugs and explosives. What makes them special is that these chemicals are directly related to certain types of crimes.

Starting with illicit drugs, the US is in the midst of the opioid crisis. This translates to forensic experts seeing an increasing number of cases. The caseload is very high, and the chemical complexity of the samples requiring analysis has also increased. It is more difficult to analyze them correctly.

With respect to explosives, this is a challenging area because of the chemical diversity that is encountered. You have organic and inorganic materials, so typically, one single analytical technique does not suffice in a given case.

In addition, there are cases in which intact explosives are present, which we call pre-explosion cases, and cases after an explosion. These two settings yield completely different samples to analyze.

Image Credit:PowerUp/Shutterstock.com

The work that I presented at the Pittcon Conference allows people to conduct chemical analysis in the field using portable technologies that do not require high-end laboratory conditions.

This is focused explicitly on rapid chemical identification of drugs and explosives with operators who do not need a chemistry background. I try to advance forensic analytical chemistryin this way.

As a forensic or analytical chemistry expert, I think the challenge is to create a methodology that allows non-experts to do complex chemical analyses themselves in a simple and error-free manner. If measurements fail because controlling the instrument is too complicated, then we have to make it simpler! This would ultimately allow law enforcement professionals to identify drugs and explosives robustly and instantly.

There are several options or routes that you can consider, such as mobile mass spectrometry, electrochemistry, and colorimetric reactions. Then, there are several spectroscopic methods to consider: Raman, infrared, and near-infrared. We chose near spectroscopy, as it lends itself very well to miniaturization. You can have very small, almost pocket-sized, near-infrared spectrometers, and they are extremely rapid. Using the technology we work with, you record a reflectance spectrum in a few seconds.

When people talk about rapid analysis, they sometimes introduce methods that take a few minutes. If you talk to professionals who operate within law enforcement or customs, a few minutes on the scene doing a measurement can feel like a lifetime. That makes near spectroscopy very attractive. Within 10 to 20 seconds, I can do multiple measurements on the same sample.

For illicit drugs, for example, the first step in the field is often a colorimetric reaction. This is challenging because people in the field have to add liquids to a sample to observe color, and they are not necessarily trained to do so.

We use reflectance sensors, where people simply place a glass vialwith a small amount of powder directly on the sensor, and then press scan. There is no sample preparation, no complex instructions. This is a very convenient process both in the field and in a laboratory situation where you are carrying out high-volume screening.

Pittcon Thought Leader: Arian Van AstenPlay

Credit is due here to Dr. Henk-Jan Ramaker from TIPb. He did and does a lot of the model development and the chemometrics (advanced data analysis).

This is also where one of the technique's challenges comes in. Imagine you are in a forensic setting, and you have a sample with an unknown composition. You have an idea that it could contain explosives or illicit drugs, depending on the context of the case, but you are not sure. The sample is also not pure.

A typical street sample of a drug can contain several other substances in addition to the psychoactive substance of interest. This includes adulterants, diluents, or tableting agents. When taking a measurement, you will get a composite signal with spectral features of all these components. So here, we need data science to help us decipher the complex signal and tell us what compounds are present and at what level.

You can take a machine learning approach, but that typically requires huge amounts of data. We can measure thousands of street samples, for which we have used other techniques like GC-MS to determine the composition. We use that knowledge to look for similar signals if we have an unknown and suggest its composition.

What Dr. Ramaker has developed is much more elegant. He takes pure compound spectra of all the known possible constituents in a sample for a given type of drug. With this limited set of spectral reference data, he subsequently 'explains' the observed signal.This is much faster and requires less reference data for a functional model. You, for instance, only need the NIR spectra for 10-15 pure compounds to fit all cocaine street formulations.

I think both are true. We have more analytical capability to look at very low levels of substances within samples and chemically understand what is going on.

Chemical profiling is a different field that I am involved in. Here, we look at how materials are degrading and what kind of raw materials are used. We are interested in impurities and what they tell us about how the material was made or transported. You cannot typically do that with portable spectroscopy. The technique is not sensitive enough. Compounds need to be present at 5-10 wt% to be 'noticed'.

It is also true that the chemical complexity of illicit drug case samples has increased considerably. There are two reasons for that.

First of all, because many countries work with lists of banned substances in their illicit drug legal framework, we have seen 'creative' criminals producing so-called new psychoactive substances (NPS). These designer drugs look and function very similar to their banned analogs but are not listed and, therefore, do not fall under the illicit drug law. Selling such a product is consequently not an illicit drug crime.

Governments tend to react when they see such new materials entering the illicit drug market. They take legal action to place the new compound on the list of banned substances. But that fuels a rat race in which the criminal makes another variant when the ban is successful. We have seen a rise in what we call designer drugs in many European markets. Meanwhile, there is an additionalchallenge here in the US where the ongoing opioid crisis is leading to drug street samples that contain multiple fentanyl analogs at relatively low levels in the presence of cocaine or heroin.

I think there is. The forensic science domain is open, but it is also a somewhat complex situation. We are scientists, so we wou
ld like to explore new methods, develop them, and share them to contribute to a safe and just society. But at the same time, there is always the risk that this information falls into the wrong hands. This is especially important when you investigate how to make explosives or how to characterize drugs of abuse.

Additionally, forensic science is typically a very international, open environment where people are eager to share, whereas criminal justice is typically more closed, domestic, and local. This makes it for instance difficult and rare to bring in foreign forensic experts to report and testify in a case. This is also understandable, crime is a sensitive and typically a national affair with local victims and perpetrators.

There are a couple of problems here. First of all, when you transition from science and innovation to something used in forensic practice and being presented as forensic evidence in court, you need to be very strict with respect to quality. You need validation studies and accredited methods. You have accreditation bodies that come and check to make sure that 'you say what you do and do what you say.'

So you need to make that new method fit for purpose. You would have to show, quite vigorously, that you know the error rates, you know when things go wrong, you know how to spot an error and how to improve. This is very important because once that evidence is in court, it can have a lot of impact, especially when drugs or explosives are involved. You need it to be free of error.

Of course, where work is done, errors are made; this is inevitable. But in a forensic setting, you need to show that you have minimized and mitigated potential errors and that you have a system in place to spot errors, correct them, and prevent them from happening in the future. Forensic evidence can make a lot of difference to the people involved, including suspects, victims, and family members, and therefore, must be of superior quality.

However, there is also the interesting question of when a forensic investigation is good enough. When is there enough selectivity to say that, with a portable technique, you can do a measurement in seconds and also present the findings with confidence in court? Here, as a forensic scientist from academia, you can run into some conservatism and resistance. People tend to rely on what they trust and have been using successfully in the past. However, these trusted methods were once also highly innovative and groundbreaking!

There is a clash here. If you are in court, then the judge, the people involved, the public prosecutor, and the legal defense all have a very simple question. Did that person fire the gun? Did the suspect produce these cocaine samples? However, forensic scientists and experts need to take scientific uncertainty into account. When the expert involved tries to explain this uncertainty, everybody starts to think, "You are the expert. Why are you telling this difficult story? The question was very straightforward; just say yes or no based on your expertise and experience".This is why forensic scientists and experts must also be great communicators, being able and willing to explain difficult scientific aspects in a simple yet convincing manner.

Collaboration is essential to developing such a methodology and successfully introducing it in forensic practice. For a lot of the research I do, I arrange a 'triangular collaboration' involving academia, commercial companies, and users. I need forensic practice because they need to tell me how an investigation is conducted and the problems and challenges they face. They can also supply me with samples from actual cases rather than artificially created samples. These are really valuable samples on which to test and develop the methodology.

At the same time, we need companies and technology to realize our ideas and develop viable and robust instrumentation. A very powerful method may exist, but the research group involved is often not capable of taking the next step and developing a product that could really make a difference. Many innovations fail because of this. Involving a company that is able to develop, introduce, and maintain a product is the magic ingredient that you need to be successful.

Basic instruction would suffice. It is very simple. You have the platform. You take the PowderPuck, a small portable benchtop, and put it on the table. You take a glass vial, put in 0.5 to 1 gram of a powder sample, put it on the instrument, and press scan. That is it. I think a 5-year-old child could get it right.

I have attended several of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) sessions here. You hear a lot about forensic science and the advancements in several areas, but there is clearly a lot of interest in portable technology and bringing that analytical technology out of the lab and into the field.

When you go out here on the exhibition floor, there is an interesting transition ongoing in terms of not just technology being presented but also computing possibilities. This allows you to create products that transfer data wirelessly, get results on your mobile phone, and connect to central servers where powerful computers carry out complex data analyses and send results back to the user. I think that we will see many more of these types of developments opening up a whole range of possibilities.

Years ago, you would go into the field with a Raman instrument, and everything would have to take place on that single instrument. But this limitation does not exist anymore. Now, you can take the measurements, send the data to a central location, and share it with other users.

Experts can also examine the data from a distance and perform a quality check on the data in seconds. To the user, this seems almost instantaneous as results appear on the smartphone or tablet. But in the mean time a lot is actually happening 'under the hood'. I think that these data science developments will revolutionize analytical chemistry.

The presentations and meetings with scientists are nice, but I think what makes Pittcon very special is the exhibition. It is massive! There is no equivalent to that in Europe or the Netherlands, and I find that very inspiring.

There is all this energy and activity, particularly when it comes to analytical chemistry. It is never only the science, right? There must be instrumental and technological developments to back it up and really make a difference, and that is what you see on the expo floor.

The first time I attended Pittcon was in 2014 in Chicago, and again in 2017. When you go out on the expo floor for the first time, it is mind-blowing. I had never seen anything like that before, even having been an analytical chemist for many years. You get this feeling of really getting into it, talking to people, touching instrumentation, and hearing about great ideas.

It is inspirational to see other types of applications that can trigger questions like, "Oh, what would the forensic angle be here? Could it be useful? Could I use this to solve a crime?" Then you start talking to people. Some of the projects that I am involved with have actually emerged from these types of discussions.

Arian van Asten is a full-time professor in forensic analytical chemistry and on-scene chemical analysis at the van t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam. His research interests include the chemical profiling of explosives and drugs, the analysis of (bio)markers of CWA (Chemical Warfare Agent) exposure, rapid chemical identification at the crime scene with portable instruments
, the forensic use of comprehensive 2D chromatography, chemical imaging of forensic traces, and the use of data science and A.I. to generate forensic chemical intelligence from large volume forensic case data. In addition, he is the director of the Master Forensic Science at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Amsterdam, the only 2-year full-time MSc program in forensic science in the Netherlands. Together with prof dr Maurice Aalders he leads the Co van Ledden Hulsebosch Center (CLHC), a national forensic network organization named after the first Dutch forensic science pioneer. Prior to his transfer to the University of Amsterdam in 2018, he worked for over 12 years at the Netherlands Forensic Institute as a member of the management team, department head, manager of R&D programs and forensic coordinator of complex, international cases, including bomb attacks and airplane crashes. He has (co)authored over 80 peer-reviewed scientific publications on (forensic) analytical chemistry and is the author of the academic course book Chemical Analysis for Forensic Evidence that was published at the end of 2022.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Pittcon.

For more information on this source, please visit Pittcon.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited (T/A) AZoNetwork, the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and Conditions of use of this website.

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Pioneering preservative removal from ancient Greek ship allows accurate dating – Chemistry World

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The preserving agent polyethylene glycol (PEG) has been removed from a sample of the 4th-century BCE Greek Kyrenia ship, allowing radiocarbon dating to provide a better estimate of when it sank. This is the first time a real proper effort at scientific dating has been made, says lead author Sturt Manning of Cornell University, US.

The Kyrenia was found off the north coast of Cyprus in 1965 and is believed to be a 4th-century BCE ancient Greek merchant ship. Radiocarbon dating was attempted to date the ship, along with evidence including coins in its cargo, but doubts remain about the accuracy of estimates for its construction and last voyage.

Modern radiocarbon dating uses accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to detect the levels of radiocarbon in objects. The level of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has changed over time due to changes in solar activity, the geodynamo and the carbon cycle, explains Tim Heaton, an environmental statistician at the University of Leeds. By radiocarbon dating the wood of trees, the ages of which are known from their rings, scientists have constructed a calibration curve for the northern hemisphere called IntCal. We now have trees extending back to 14,300 years ago, says Heaton, who is part of the IntCal working group. IntCal provides an estimate of radiocarbon levels over the last 55,000 years.

Radiocarbon dating of wooden artefacts recovered from water is complicated by the agent commonly used to preserve them polyethylene glycol (PEG). Impregnation of PEG is a standard treatment in wet wood conservation in many institutions worldwide, explains Malin Sahlstedt, a conservator at the Vasa Museum. This is because it helps to prevent warping and shrinking of the wood. The Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIIIs navy, for example,spent years soaking in PEG. However, because PEG is derived from fossil fuels, it introduces dead carbon-14 into the wood rendering accurate radiocarbon dating impossible.

To test a method for removing PEG from wood that had been developed at the University of Groningen, the team acquired a PEG-preserved piece of wood from Colchester, UK. Because dendrochronology had been done on this wood, we knew it dated from exactly when Boudicca had her revolt in Britain, says Manning. After soaking samples at 80C in ultrapure water for 36 hours, radiocarbon analysis was accurate enough to show that the majority of the PEG had been removed.

The researchers repeated the process with a tiny sample from the Kyrenia and also took radiocarbon measurements for some almonds, and a small piece of the boat that had been stored in water rather than PEG-treated. However, the results gave dates that made no sense. It was like, What on Earths going on here? Because this doesnt seem to match up with anybodys archaeological estimate and doesnt seem possible, says Manning. And we then realised that not a single recent AMS date was part of the period between 350 and 250 BC.

Prior to AMS becoming the standard, radiocarbon dating was done using a beta-counting method that required a lot of material and was far less accurate. Youre literally using an iPhones worth of some unique historic something to get one not very accurate measurement, Manning notes. Tree ring samples were also typically measured over five or 10-year periods, rather than annually. Until recently, people didnt think atmospheric radiocarbon levels could vary that much from one year to the next, explains Tim Heaton.

To fix the calibration curve, the team sourced sequoia from the US and oak from the Netherlands and performed AMS measurements on annual rings at two different laboratories. Using their data to revise the calibration curve, they now believe the Kyrenia was constructed between 426400 BCE, with its last voyage taking place in 383355 BCE.

With their changes to a century of the calibration curve, Manning believes that there will be new interest in trying to relook at some of the debated cases of artefacts. Their successful removal of PEG from wood may also inspire some new discoveries regarding other archaeologic specimens.

For Manning, the slow process of refining the history of the Kyrenia is the scientific process in action. It just shows that often science involves repeatedly improving things, rather than you just get the right answer immediately.

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Establishing the origin of Marcus-inverted-region behaviour in the excited-state dynamics of cobalt(III) polypyridyl … – Nature.com

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Establishing the origin of Marcus-inverted-region behaviour in the excited-state dynamics of cobalt(III) polypyridyl ... - Nature.com

Companion compound for naloxone could boost opioid reversal effects, save lives – Chemistry World

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A new compound that binds to a part of the -opioid receptor (OR) could be a useful tool in preventing deaths from opioid overdose. The molecule works in conjunction with naloxone, boosting its effectiveness seven-fold.

Naloxone is an effective treatment for opioid overdose. However, larger and repeated doses are needed in response to overdoses from more potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

In a search for a potent alternative to naloxone, researchers screened a large DNA-encoded chemical library and identified a potential candidate that was highly selective for the -opioid receptor. This new compound codename 368 is a negative allosteric modulator that binds to the OR but at a different site to opioids. The researchers explained that, until now, selective potent negative allosteric modulators for the OR had remained elusive.

The researchers found that when 368 was bound to the OR, it enhanced the binding affinity of naloxone, boosting its potency by over seven-fold. Observations made using cryo-electron microscopy showed that 368 worked cooperatively with naloxone to potently block opioid agonist signalling.

In vivo mouse models revealed that the addition of 368 meant that lower doses of naloxone could be used to effectively inhibit the effects of morphine and fentanyl, while minimising withdrawal symptoms.

Further screening of other negative allosteric modulators could help uncover their mechanism of action and improve the effectiveness of these compounds, the researchers write.

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Greece’s Thomas Walkup reveals key to chemistry, praises team unselfishness and Giannis – Eurohoops

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By Antonis Stroggylakis/info@eurohoops.net

There were a lot of things that Greece guard Thomas Walkup loved about the win of his team over the Dominican Republic for the Olympic Qualifiers. What particularly pleased him was the level of basketball that he and his teammates delivered in a sold-out Peace and Friendship arena.

Its not just about the winning, Walkup said. Its about the quality of basketball for us. Not just tonight but in general. From the very first day it was about the quality of basketball. And tonight I think we had a pretty good quality of basketball.

Thats an understatement. Greece produced 109 points on 27 assists for just eight turnovers a number that gets even more impressive considering how fast-paced the game was at times. Vassilis Spanoulis players executed with the precision of 36 out of 57 from the field and their offensive prowess and fluidity generated plenty of beautiful plays and highlights.

Everybody is unselfish, everybody is willing to pass, everybodys passing the ball when they should pass the ball, Walkup commented. Its really just fun basketball to be a part of because you see how the ball is moving and how everybodys playing in rhythm.

Follow all the action of the Olympics qualifiers with Courtside 1891 on DAZN

Walkup himself successfully played a perhaps unlikely part of a scorer rather than his usual role of facilitator. He finished with 17 points on 6 out of 9 shots, including 3-6 triples and a couple of key buckets when the Dominican Republic was trying to come back in the game during the third period.

Strangely enough, he didnt register any assists. There was no need to.

Im comfortable wherever I need to be used, Walkup stated. Whats great about this team is that everybody is playing for the guy next to him. Thats what makes it flawless.

Considering that training camp began just two weeks ago, Greece is displaying some enviable chemistry. The kind of which you find in groups that have been together for a long time.

The players communicate with each other on the floor very quickly and quite smoothly, finding each other easily, distributing the ball around with speed and being at the right spot at the right moment for their teammates to find them.

Walkup doesnt believe that this is about any tactic or strategy and attributes this to the mentality that he and the rest of the guys carry on the court.

I think its the character of the team, Walkup mentioned. Everybody is unselfish. Everybody wants the guy beside him to do just as well as themselves. It makes it easy to play for someone else. To play for the next pass, the extra pass. It also helps when you have Giannis who can create everything.

Speaking of Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks superstar had a literally unstoppable performance of 32 points on 11 out of 11 shots. The only way that the Dominican Republic could hope to put any brakes on him was by fouling often rather hard and sending him to the line.

It was great, Walkup said on sharing the floor with Giannis for the first time in an official game. He was flying up and down the court. Hes creating something out of nothing a lot of the times. Nick [Calathes] also did a pretty good job of getting him involved too, giving him a lot of easy buckets. I dont have to tell you guys you can watch the game and see how incredible he is.

The one who has infused Greece with this kind of team ethos is none other than Spanoulis. Walkup went into detail on how the legendary player and now coach set the tone from the get go on what should the dominant mindset around the squad.

From the very first day he said that there are no clubs, no egos, none of that on this team, Walkup explained. From the start, that its about the national team. Its about Greece, representing Greece. This is so much bigger than our clubs, for ourselves, than our families our friends and everything that you typically play for as an individual. Youre playing for something much-much bigger. I think thats where this comes in.

While often the main ball handler with Olympiacos Piraeus, Walkup finds himself adjusting to a different situation on the Greek national team, especially when he shares the floor with star playmaker Nick Calathes.

How does he feel about being the off-the-ball guy for a change?

I love it, Walkup said, rather enthusiastically. Of course there are still times when I do play on the ball. But I think that Nick and guy can help each other and take pressure off each other. Its tiring to play defense, bringing the ball up, create offense. I think we play off each other pretty well.

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Greece's Thomas Walkup reveals key to chemistry, praises team unselfishness and Giannis - Eurohoops

Lupita Nyong’o On Cats & Chemistry With Joseph Quinn – Refinery29

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That trust definitely showed up on screen and off resulting in viral chemistry. So who would Nyongo want to work with next? When we asked her our signature Unbothered question about what the actress needs right now (in our opinion Black womens needs arent prioritized enough. Period), she had a quick response: What do I need? I need to work on a project that is funny. I need to work on a light and funny project. You can say a lot about Nyong'o's filmography but "light" probably isn't the first word that comes to mind. After winning an Oscar for 12 Years A Slave, Nyong'o's biggest films have been Us, the Black Panther and Star Wars franchises, and spy thriller The 355. None of those are going to leave you in stiches, but as Nyong'o proved in our interview and throughout the Quiet Place press tour, she's got comedy chops. She even has some dream co-stars in mind: "Yahya Abdul-Mateen II or Donald Glover," she says after some thought.

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Chemistry by type of stew – Can it be so easy to combine very different substances in a "one-pot synthesis" to create a … – Chemie.de

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Chemists at the University of Konstanz describe how they have made a very unusual reaction possible.

An old dream of mankind is to combine the best of two worlds: to bring together the advantages of two opposing things without having to accept their disadvantages. This old dream is also being pursued in chemistry: how good would it be to combine the properties of organic and inorganic substances?

Organic substances stand for high functional diversity, while inorganic substances are very stable. The fact that chemists want to bring them together in the form of hybrid materials is nothing new. The only problem is that organic and inorganic substances require very different reaction conditions. You can't just throw them into a pot and stir them twice. Or can you? Prof. Dr. Miriam Unterlass' research group at the University of Konstanz has developed a process that can do just that: a "one-pot synthesis", as the chemists call the process, or rather a "one-pot synthesis".

"One-pot synthesis" means exactly what the name suggests: The very different reagents are not treated separately, but are all brought together in a common vessel. It is very important that the reactions of the different substance classes take place at the same time and synergistically. However, for this to work at all, the right balance must be found between the very different reaction conditions. This is very tricky and requires a lot of laboratory work, but as the chemists in Constance show, it can be very easy with the "right recipe".

"The beauty of our approach lies in its simplicity," emphasizes Frank Sailer, who was instrumental in developing the one-pot synthesis in his doctoral thesis. "Just like a stew, you have to find the right cooking point so that the lentils have not yet disintegrated, but the potatoes are already cooked through." Applied to chemical reactions, this means You need the right ratio of pressure, temperature and time. And, of course, the right ingredients.

"We don't need any toxic catalysts or solvents," says Sailer, citing the advantages of the process - it is therefore sustainable and environmentally friendly. The only solvent used is pure isopropanol (the main component of disinfectants), which is harmless and available in large quantities. The main ingredients of the new material class are special dye molecules, so-called pigments, and layered titanium dioxide.

If it is so simple, why wasn't this reaction process discovered long ago? "Because the idea is very unusual. The organic components are not normally synthesized under such conditions," explains Sailer. Finding such reaction pathways is a declared goal of Miriam Unterlass' working group: she is investigating how chemical synthesis processes can be optimized by choosing the right framework conditions and lead to better, more sustainable results. "We produce better materials in a faster and more environmentally friendly way," explains Miriam Unterlass.

So is it the best of both worlds that has come out of one-pot synthesis? Strictly speaking, it is much more than that. "We don't just want a sum of the properties, but a synergetic interaction," explains Frank Sailer, "new properties that the two starting materials don't have." The new class of material that Sailer and his colleagues have created is virtually predestined for batteries due to its layered structure. The name of the new material class: Pigments@TiO2.

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Microsoft bolsters quantum platform with gen AI, molecular simulation capabilities – CIO

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Researchers can ask Generative Chemistry for molecules with desired characteristics, as well as provide information about their targeted application and let the system help determine relevant molecular properties, according to Microsoft. The feature not only will provide them with candidates matching their parameters, but also suggest molecules that have not been seen before with useful properties tuned for a specific application, and whose synthesis is feasible in a reasonable number of steps.

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is a method used across a variety of molecular simulations that helps researchers to simulate and study the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and nanoparticles, as well as surfaces and interfaces. Such DFT simulations can be complex and compute-intensive to optimize and run, often requiring the use of supercomputers.

Microsoft has now added Accelerated DFT as a managed service to Azure Quantum Elements to run these simulations at what the company said is an unprecedented speed; that is, an order of magnitude faster compared to PySCF, a widely used open-source DFT code, according to the post.

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Microsoft bolsters quantum platform with gen AI, molecular simulation capabilities - CIO

Empowering every scientist with AI-augmented scientific discovery – The Official Microsoft Blog – Microsoft

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At Microsoft, our vision is to empower scientists with the latest breakthroughs in AI to unlock their full creative potential and tackle some of our most pressing challenges. This vision will require bringing the full power of generative AI together with quantum-classical hybrid computing to augment every stage of the scientific method. Whether expanding knowledge research, creating better hypotheses, or accelerating experimentation and analyses, doing so demands a purpose-built cloud platform for science. This is why we built Azure Quantum Elements for chemistry and materials science.

Today, were announcing Generative Chemistry and Accelerated DFT, which will expand the ways researchers can harness the full power of this platform. These breakthrough capabilities will empower scientists to compress the next 250 years of chemistry into the next 25.

With Generative Chemistry, we want to broaden the horizons of scientific exploration. Researchers can generate and explore novel molecules suited for specific industry applications using the latest AI models trained on hundreds of millions of compounds, and then evaluate the steps suggested by the workflow for synthesizing the most promising candidates in a lab more efficiently all in a matter of days rather than years.

With Accelerated DFT, researchers can expedite and scale their chemical discovery pipelines by simulating the quantum-mechanical properties of molecules at an unprecedented speed an order of magnitude faster compared to other Density Functional Theory (DFT) codes.

This brings us closer to a new paradigm for scientific discovery, where advanced AI and digital tools are more accessible than ever to scientists, students, and labs across industries. Below is our vision for how researchers will be able to leverage these breakthrough capabilities to design new molecules and enable the transformation of entire sectors from consumer goods and medicine, to manufacturing and energy, in turn addressing some of our most pressing societal challenges.

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Were working towards this vision today. As part of the private preview of Azure Quantum Elements, scientists and developers have the opportunity to explore Accelerated DFT today, with the potential to access Generative Chemistry in the coming weeks.

Were already putting our vision into practice by collaborating with Unilever, a global leader in consumer goods, which serves over 3.4 billion people every single day. Unilever is harnessing the power of Microsoft supercomputing and AI services to support their digital R&D transformation and product innovation.

From global ambitions like reversing climate change and pioneering renewable energy sources to personal ones like living more sustainably and using healthier and safer products, we all want to do our part to create a better world. Time is of the essence for many of these goals, with more than 8 million scientists1around the globe working to pioneer innovative solutions and unlock progress. At Microsoft, we aim to empower them with state-of-the-art digital tools to harness the full collective ingenuity of every researcher and lab around the world.

Just as generative AI has unleashed new waves of creativity and improved productivity with collaborative tools like Copilot, we are now bringing AI and natural language processing capabilities to science. Our goal is to integrate AI reasoning into every stage of the scientific method: this requires the power of next-generation AI models to speed up the scientific process from hypothesis to results. It starts with knowledge research and hypothesis generation, connecting the dots by generating millions of potential molecular candidate solutions, then narrowing down candidates with digital experiments and analyzing the outcomes all in a matter of days. We demonstrated how this approach can land real-world results in our collaboration with PNNL, where we screened over 32 million candidates to discover and synthesize a new material that holds the potential for better batteries a tangible example of the possibilities in this new era of scientific discovery.

When powered by natural language tools, this new paradigm will help create an autonomous reasoning loop with AI at every stage as a scientific assistant. It will redefine how we approach innovation by democratizing these capabilities for breakthrough discoveries.

Generative Chemistry will unleash a new wave of creativity for scientists tasked with discovering and designing new molecules. This will enable breakthrough growth across many industries, whether helping an oil and gas company discover a stronger fuel additive for enhancing the longevity of engine life, or an adhesive firm creating a new chemical for strengthening adhesion while removing unwanted residue.

We could compare this discovery process to searching for a small box in a large, crowded and dark warehouse with one small flashlight. We can only focus the light on a small area at a time while the rest of the warehouse remains completely dark and unknown. Generative AI gives us a much smarter light that can point in new directions, providing visibility where we may not have considered or have been able to look before.

Researchers can ask Generative Chemistry for molecules with desired characteristics, such as the ability to degrade rapidly or be recycled more easily. They can also provide information about their targeted application and let the system help determine relevant molecular properties. After a few more steps, they receive a set of candidates matching those parameters for further study.

However, simply generating candidates is not sufficient for transforming the discovery process with AI. The essential criteria for computational tools in chemistry are that they help scientists discover molecules that are novel, synthesizable and useful in the real world. This is why Im excited to see our approach to Generative Chemistry come to life, suggesting molecules that have not been seen before, with useful properties tuned for a specific application, and whose synthesis is feasible in a reasonable number of steps.

For this reason, Generative Chemistry will offer researchers potential steps to consider as they develop their recipe for synthesizing these molecular candidates in a laboratory. Support for this critical component has been developed from the capabilities of our AutoRXN software, exploring chemical reactions in reverse order, which can help to evaluate synthesis pathways for creating a target molecule.

This capability is truly groundbreaking for scientific discovery. Businesses and research groups can look for efficient, cost-effective and innovative methods to develop new molecules in a matter of days, compressing the iterative process of extensive database searches and trial-and-error laboratory experiments. This end-to-end workflow will provide scientists with entirely new compounds that could lead to the next breakthrough in manufacturing, medicine and more.

Were also announcing Accelerated DFT to offer a simplified and more powerful quantum chemistry solution for scientists. For the past few decades, DFT has been an extremely popular method used across a variety of molecular simulations, helping researchers to simulate and study the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and nanoparticles, as well as surfaces and interfaces.

We can liken molecular systems to traffic systems, where cars moving in various directions at different speeds represent electrons.
From a traffic helicopter, we can observe the overall flow of traffic even if we dont know each cars speed and destination. DFT provides this helicopter view of molecular systems, simplifying the complex task of tracking individual electrons by instead mapping out the density of them at a higher altitude.

Such DFT simulations can be complex to optimize and run, and often require supercomputer-scale resources. This is why our managed DFT service, based on innovation developed by Microsoft Research, enables researchers to perform substantially faster calculations than other DFT codes and offers a 20-fold average increase in speed compared to PySCF, a widely used open-source DFT code.

Accelerated DFT is already used by many organizations such as AspenTech, DTU Energy University of Denmark and Unilever. It seamlessly integrates into broader chemistry and materials science workflows, and paves the way for expediting innovations in therapeutics, environmental sustainability and beyond.

You can learn more about this announcement in the technical blog, Introducing two powerful new capabilities in Azure Quantum Elements: Generative Chemistry and Accelerated DFT.

Unilever stands at the forefront of the consumer goods industry, with a strong portfolio of household brands that are used by 3.4 billion people every day, including Dove, TRESemm, Omo, Degree, Hellmanns and Ben & Jerrys. Whether cleaning, beauty or care products, each requires the latest scientific breakthroughs to ensure the best possible consumer experience and enhance daily life.

Over the past two and a half years, Unilever has worked with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation forward. Unilever is bringing its digital vision to life through the transformational DataLab its digital counterpart to the companys physical laboratories with the help of Microsoft Azure. From unlocking the secrets of our skins microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multi-billion-dollar business, Unilever is redefining what it means to be a consumer goods company in the modern world with leading science.

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With Copilot and the advanced simulation capabilities of Azure Quantum Elements, Unilever can query scientific information using natural language, performing thousands of computational simulations in the time it would take to run tens of laboratory experiments. Unilever scientists can use the data gathered from these simulations to fine-tune models that screen tens of thousands of materials at substantial speed or enable the exploration of intricate chemical reactions.

For example, R&D teams can expand their search space for novel molecules that restore natural bonds in hair fibers across more hair types, in turn redefining the standards of personalized hair care for brands like Dove and TRESemm. Furthermore, by placing scaled simulations at the forefront of the discovery funnel, Unilever will be further empowered to expedite the delivery of solutions within their key sustainability focus areas.

Digital tools are unlocking an unprecedented age of scientific discovery. Using advanced computing power and AI, we are able to compress decades of lab work into days, accessing a level of insight we could not previously have imagined. This technological leap, coupled with our vast repository of proprietary data and a century of expertise in personal and household care, means our scientists are able to lead the industry in developing the next generation of consumer goods. Alberto Prado, Global Head of R&D Digital and Partnerships at Unilever

We stand on the cusp of unprecedented innovation, and at Microsoft, we continue to pioneer state-of-the-art solutions to usher in a new era of scientific discovery. We remain focused on achieving scaled quantum computing and more breakthroughs on our path to engineering our topological qubits with inherent hardware-level stability.

Earlier this year, we demonstrated with Quantinuum the most reliable logical qubits on record, further advancing the state-of-the-art for quantum computing. And recently, we simulated a chemical catalyst combining classical supercomputers, AI and logical qubits created with Microsofts qubit-virtualization system and Quantinuums H1 hardware. This combination holds the key to unlocking scientific breakthroughs enabled by a new generation of hybrid-computing applications.

In the coming months, we will bring advanced logical qubit capabilities using our software and Quantinuums hardware in private preview in Azure Quantum Elements. As logical qubit capabilities scale to deliver increasingly reliable results, we will unlock simulation accuracy, moving us from scientific advantage to commercial advantage, and ultimately to solving some of the worlds most pressing problems.

Were committed to advancing these technologies responsibly, always focusing on innovation, empowerment and trust. Thats why we are committed to responsible computing practices and the Microsoft AI principles, to help ensure that safety measures adequately account for the increasing power of AI and quantum.

For more information about todays announcements:

Top image: Leaders from Unilever and Microsoft discuss the Azure Quantum Elements program.

Sources

1. Statistics and resources | 2021 Science Report. This translates into 8.854 million full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers by 2018.

Tags: Accelerated DFT, AI, Azure Quantum Elements, Generative Chemistry, quantum computing

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Full-Time Lecturer – Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry job with California Polytechnic State University – San … – The Chronicle of Higher…

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The Chemistry and Biochemistry Department in the Bailey College of Science and Mathematics at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is seeking to hire one or more full-time lecturers for two-year contracts, with appointments beginning September 16, 2024 and ending June 13, 2026. The bulk of teaching assignments will be in introductory chemistry or organic chemistry for majors and non-majors, with the potential for other assignments. Qualified candidates from all disciplines of chemistry are invited to apply. Finalists may be asked to submit a video lesson of their teaching. Rank and salary are commensurate with qualifications and experience. The anticipated hiring range for this role is $74,700 - $85,500 annually.

At California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, we believe that cultivating an environment that embraces and promotes diversity is fundamental to the success of our students, our employees and our community. Bringing people together from different backgrounds, experiences and value systems fosters the innovative and creative thinking that exemplifies Cal Polys values of free inquiry, cultural and intellectual diversity, mutual respect, civic engagement, and social and environmental responsibility. Cal Poly's commitment to diversity informs our efforts in recruitment, hiring and retention. California Polytechnic State University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

SPECIAL CONDITIONS

The person holding this position is considered a 'mandated reporter' under the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act and is required to comply with the requirements set forth in CSU Executive Order 1083 as a condition of employment.

Following a conditional offer of employment, a background check (including a criminal records check) must be completed satisfactorily before any candidate may start work with Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Failure to satisfactorily complete the background check may result in the withdrawal of the offer of employment. Note: Cal Poly cannot deny an applicant a position solely or in part due to a criminal conviction history until it has performed an individualized assessment and linked the relevant conviction history with specific job duties in the position being sought.

Please note: Current employees who are offered positions on campus will be required to undergo a background check for any position where a background check is required by law or that Cal Poly has designated as sensitive. Sensitive positions are those requiring heightened scrutiny of individuals holding the position based on potential for harm to children, concerns for the safety and security of people, animals, or property, or heightened risk of financial loss to Cal Poly or individuals in the university community.

For health and well-being, Cal Poly is a smoke & tobacco-free campus. The university is committed to promoting a healthy environment for all members of our community.

In accordance with the California State University (CSU) Out-of-State Employment Policy, the CSU is a state entity whose business operations reside within the State of California and prohibits hiring employees to perform CSU related work outside of California.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The Chemistry and Biochemistry Department offers programs of study leading to Bachelor's Degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry. The department also serves many technical programs in the University. Students may choose a concentration in Polymers and Coatings or a focused Master's program in Polymers and Coatings Science.For more information about the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, please seehttps://chemistry.calpoly.edu/.

HOW TO APPLY

Interested candidates must attach (1) a cover letter, (2) resume/curriculum vitae (3) teaching philosophy statement, and (4) unofficial transcript(s) as one file. These documents are not accepted in hard copy format. Please be prepared to provide three professional references with names and email addresses when completing the online faculty application. Official transcripts are required prior to appointment. Finalists may be asked to submit a video lesson of their teaching.

Review of applications will begin April 25, 2024 and will continue until the position is filled. Applications received after that date may be considered.Positions are open until filled.

For questions, contact the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department by phone at 805-756-2694 or by email atchem@calpoly.edu.

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Sparking industrys interest in electrosynthesis | Feature – Chemistry World

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Industrys reliance on petrochemicals is one of the main reasons why electrochemical synthesis was never fully explored says Tobias Grtner, chief executive at ESy-Labs, a start-up located in Regensburg, Germany, that specialises in electrosynthesis technology. Modern industrial organic chemistry has evolved to efficiently exploit fossil fuel-based hydrocarbon feedstocks and turn them into chemical products using classical organic chemistry, from the nylon fibres in our clothes to the artificial flavours in our foods.

The carbon toll of these industries the chemical sector being the third largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide and a legacy of polluting waste is leading chemists to search for greener processes. And they are turning to electrosynthesis: using an electric current to facilitate chemical reactions instead of chemical redox agents. Electrochemistry was a niche [method] but more and more its coming out of the niche and being recognised as a real synthetic method, says Grtner. But while publications and funding in electrosynthesis have been on the rise in the last decade, academic trends dont always successfully make their way to industry.

Electrosynthesis has never been absent from the chemical industry. Interest tended to rise in times when crude oil prices rose or electricity prices fell, points out one of ESy-Labs co-founders, Siegfried Waldvogel from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany who has been working in electrosynthesis for 30 years. One of the earliest examples from 1849 is the Kolbe reaction, the electrosynthetic radical coupling of two carboxylic acids. There was also an upsurge in interest in the 1960s with the Baizer process developed by Monsanto. This cathodic reduction of acrylonitrile to adiponitrile is used to annually produce in the range of 100,000 tonnes of the polyamide nylon-6,6, a superior form of nylon, made from hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid (hexanedioic acid).

The latest resurgence comes with the challenge to decarbonise the chemical industry and the hope that cheaper renewable electricity can be used to fuel these reactions. This is certainly the case for biotechnology company Vertex Pharmaceuticals, who focus on rational design approaches to drug discovery. The ability to do away with reagents and just use electricity, especially if it comes from a green source, is certainly a consideration, says Vertex principal scientist Robert Green.

Agrochemicals specialist Syngenta started looking at electrosynthesis around 2017, after Waldvogel gave a talk at their research labs in Switzerland. Chris Scarborough, who was then working in process chemistry, says he was particularly struck by the tendency in industry to avoid direct oxidation reactions which are often dangerous, and instead use workarounds involving far more steps including nitrations, reductions or diazotisations. Electrosynthesis could offer more direct routes, plus a simple safety lever. If there was a problem, cutting the electrical supply could also stop a runaway reaction or something dangerous happening, says Scarborough.

The other safety advantage is the removal of toxic reagents currently used in many conventional organic syntheses, including noble metal catalysts. [This is important] especially in the pharmaceutical industry where you have to be sure that there is no contamination, says Waldvogel. Electrosynthesis also promises less waste. [For example,] if youre not using sodium borohydride as a reducing agent and producing boron oxides as byproducts, its potentially a much cleaner synthetic approach, says David Hodgson, a specialist in industrial electrochemisty and chief technology officer at advanced materials producers Technical Fibre Products.

Cost at scale is the bottom line for most industry reactions, although that isnt always the case for medicinal chemists, because the value of an active pharmaceutical ingredient is so high compared to bulk or even fine chemical, says Pierre-Georges Echeverria, R&D director at US sustainable specialty chemical company Pennakem. For medicinal chemists [they are looking for] short cuts in the synthesis, he adds. When the chemistry is straightforward, even if the yield is not that good, they dont care: they have the molecule and thats great.

The hope is also that electrosynthesis may provide access to new chemistries via the free radical intermediate species that are produced in an electrolysis cell. The chemical reaction concept behind [electrosynthesis] is in most cases completely different compared to conventional chemical reactions, explains Grtner. There are loads of examples of making interesting heterocycles that were quite frankly a pain to make, that you can [make more easily] and pharma and agrochemicals are stuffed full of interesting heterocycles.

The problem for industry is always scaling up the reactions developed in academic labs. Echeverria says he started experimenting with electrosynthetic oxidations of secondary alcohols in 2016 at Minakem, a sister company focused on making active pharmaceutical ingredients. He was trying to reduce the oxidant waste generated. It works pretty well, [but] at that time we gave up on this topic, due to the lack of scale up solutions. A lack of standardised equipment for scale is still a limitation facing industry, he says.

The team at Syngenta has also grappled with scale, and particularly moving between the different scales they need for fast early exploration and then moving to producing larger amounts, all ideally running under the same conditions. Process research chemist Matthias Lehmann says they now have two systems at the 100mg scale to be able to deliver an answer to whether a transformation is possible or not. But they found that although commercial equipment existed for very large scale manufacturing there was nothing to evaluate industrially relevant scale-up conditions at the gram scale, so they designed their own kit, which they still use today.

When scaling up, typically all these processes switch to flow, says Green. Flow chemistry allows reactions to run in a continuous stream rather than in batches and is a well-established technique for large scale manufacturing. At scale, working in flow is crucial because in batch the size of the necessary electrode surface would also need to be scaled up, making the whole cell unmanageably large.

Can we do an electrosynthetic reaction here, and will this save steps or waste?

The problems of mass transport of reactants at larger scales is even greater for electrosynthesis than for conventional scale ups. You need to transport starting materials to your two electrodes and remove the product from your electrodes and this has to be matched with the reaction kinetics, explains Syngenta research chemistry team leader Andrei Iosub. Syngenta have experimented with adding mixers to their electrochemical flow cell to increase mass transfer rates.

The number of companies who are introducing new electrosyntheses is not clear says chemist Kevin Lam from the University of Greenwich in the UK. He has worked with both GSK and AstraZeneca, but he says companies are not always open about their new strategies so its difficult to know. Some companies never stopped electrosyntheses; Lam recently noticed German chemical company BASF have long-standing patents on electrosyntheses that have only just been published in the academic literature.

Syngenta are so far only working at a small scale. Whenever we have an interesting oxidative transformation, we think OK, can we do an electrosynthetic reac
tion here, and will this save steps or waste? says Iosub. They are also thinking carefully about how some of the traditional ingrained workarounds to avoid direct oxidations could provide opportunities for simpler direct electrosynthesis. We found that there are plenty of exciting opportunities for electrochemistry in our environment, says Scarborough. The team are sure its just a matter of time before one such reaction is scaled up for production.

Vertex are also in the early stages. Weve developed some internal capabilities to be able to quickly optimise and screen different reactions but, says Green, were still assessing the literature, understanding where the best impacts can be made.

Since his first foray in electrosynthesis, Echeverria and colleagues partnered with leading academic electrosynthetic chemist, Phil Baran from the Scripps Research Institute in California, US, to see if they could develop greener and more cost-effective electrosyntheses. They developed a furan oxidation to synthesise 2,5-dimethoxydihydrofuran (DMDHF), used to make a wide variety of valuable chemicals such as pyridazine used in agrochemicals and flavour enhancer maltol. The furan starting material came from the bio-based sugar dehydration product furfural (CHOCHO) and the pilot was able to produce a kilogram per week, getting to a current efficiency of 88% (meaning 88% of electrons delivered contributed to the desired reaction). Echeverria says this process would compete with DMDHF produced conventionally in China and could be a game changer.

The Minakem team also worked with Baran to develop a carbonyl desaturation reaction that could proceed without the large amounts of expensive palladium catalyst used in the conventional synthesis. This type of reaction adds a carboncarbon double bond next to a carbonyl group to open up downstream reactivity. They came up with a simple process, scalable to 100g.

The electrode material and design is one of the crucial factors in electrosyntheses. If you dont get the right electrode material, the right current density and the right engineering, you can end up making a very different mix of products than you would want, so that affects selectivity and it affects yield, says Hodgson. Things like [electrode] porosity is going to be important. His company are looking at the type of advanced materials that might improve electrode performance.

Its 200% efficiency if both electrodes are productive

Optimising the factors contributing to successful electrosyntheses, particularly the choice of electrode, is often trial and error. If you have a lot of experience, you have a kind of intuition, of course, but the problem is, even in my case, I was sure that in [a particular] reaction, this electrode should perform much better but the experimentation turned out differently, says Waldvogel. His start-up ESy-Labs, founded in 2018, is hoping to change that.

When you switch from 25 to 35C, you see a dependence on the reaction, but switching from copper to carbon and there is no dependence, explains Grtner. ESy Labs is using AI and other statistical methods to better optimise processes. They are carrying out high throughput electrosyntheses from 4080 reactions in parallel to create enough data points to train an AI system to identify the best electrode material, solvent or electrolyte for any given reaction and hope this will aide in designing new processes.

Lam says that the holy grail for industrial electrosynthesis would be a paired electrosynthesis where a useful product is produced at both the anode and cathode. Thats really fantastic its 200% efficiency because both electrodes are productive. A long established example is German chemical manufacturer BASFs production of the aromatic aldehyde lysmeral (butylphenyl methylpropional) which provides an artificial lily of the valley scent, once produced at the 10,000 ton per year scale (it is now banned from cosmetics in the EU and UK due to its endocrine disrupting properties). The electrosynthesis produces an intermediate methoxy benzaldehyde at the anode which undergoes further reactions to form lysmeral. At the cathode a benzenedicarboxylic acid is reduced forming phthalide, a chemical used to produce fungicides. Its what I would consider the slam dunk application, if you can find one and scale up the electrochemistry, says Iosub

Jean-Philippe Tessonnier, a chemical and biological engineer at Iowa State University in the US, is trying another approach: hybrid microbial electrosynthesis. This combines the power of biocatalysis and the advantages of electrosynthesis, using biomass feedstocks. With low-cost renewable electricity this starts to look economically attractive.

Tessonnier says that biosyntheses using bacteria or yeast can be efficient at some chemical conversions but not others particularly removing carboncarbon double bonds. Maybe biology should focus on what it does well, and let chemistry do the rest, he explains. The method developed with colleagues at the Center for Biorenewable Chemicals initially aimed to produce adipic acid the nylon feedstock usually derived from petrochemicals through multiple oxidation steps. Over 3 million tons of it are made annually, producing a similar amount of nitrous oxide greenhouse gas.

Rather than separating the phenol starting material produced in the fermentation broth from other impurities, Tessonnier decided to see what would happen if he just stuck in some electrodes. Fermentation broths contain a lot of salts, magnesium sulfate and other things, so this already looks like an electrolyte, he reasoned. In 2021, their first experiments, microbially converted sugars or lignin monomers into the dicarboxylic acid cis,cis-muconic acid (C6H6O4), which they were then able to electrochemically hydrogenate to remove the double bond and form trans-3-hexenedioic acid at very high yields. While not their intended product, it is also a valuable monomer because it can be used to produce nylon 6,6 with attached functional groups to introduce novel properties.

Tessonier has now also published a hybrid method to produce adipic acid, using supported palladium nanoparticles on carbon as a catalyst which facilitates electron transfer and the subsequent reduction to adipic acid on surface terrace sites. Other groups are pursuing similar approaches including a Kolbe electrosynthesis to couple medium chain fatty acids from fermented biowaste to produce hydrocarbon fuels.

Although electrosynthesis undoubtably has the potential to be greener, it may not always be the best solution according to Lam. The electricity costs are not negligible: At large scale, every single volt will consume more money, so you need to have a very efficient process, and he says there will still be waste. We have to add a large amount of supporting electrolyte not always, but very often for reactions, and it doesnt contribute to anything in the reaction.

What I havent seen much of in electrochemistry yet is really complex molecules, concedes Green. Big molecules that have got multiple functionality. Through controlling the potential, you can tune in the reactivity to a specific part of a molecule but Fundamentally, you can only tune in to the lowest energy [reaction] thats always going to go first, he says. Its also difficult to control stereochemistry. For now it is largely restricted to producing the earlier building block molecules, but clever catalysts or electrode design could provide further control and Green hopes the research community will come up with solutions. As people apply it to more complex molecules, well
see how far can you push it.

Electrosynthesis is not magic

In the meantime, moving electrosynthesis into industry suffers from the same problems as the adoption of any new technology. The day to day pull back towards the normal chemistry can be so strong that you can lose focus, says Scarborough, But he says the team at Syngenta arent giving up.

More unique to this technology is the mismatch in the skills set of many synthetic organic chemists. Lam jokes that many of them were likely traumatised by physical electrochemistry as undergraduates. Scarborough has seen similar reservations. When I started [doing electrosynthesis] at Syngenta, I had some people looking at me like I was crazy to plug this reaction into the wall, he remembers. People were very nervous about the set up originally.

Companies are packed with people who have been using thermal chemistry and thermal catalysis for decades, so it takes time to educate people and make them just willing to listen to you and look at potential benefits, says Tessonnnier. In his experience pharma companies seem most open to change.

But Waldvogel is convinced electrosynthesis will have a huge impact. Im very confident that its not a bubble just keep in mind, you can be more oxidising than fluorine gas and more reducing than caesium. a lot of things are possible.

The ultimate challenge is to activate carbon dioxide electrochemically to use as a synthetic building block, an area Lam is working on. But he concludes electrosynthesis is not magic, and it can sometimes be oversold. Its not going to replace conventional chemistry. These are different technologies and complementary technologies, says Tessonnnier . But it does offer an alternative way to drive a chemical reaction and another tool in the industrial chemists toolbox.

Rachel Brazil is a science writer based in London, UK

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Sparking industrys interest in electrosynthesis | Feature - Chemistry World

Exploring Environmental Interfaces with Spectroscopy – AZoM

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From PittconJun 17 2024Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.

In this interview conducted at Pittcon 2024 in San Diego, we spoke to Professor Vicki Grassian, this year's recipient of the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award, about how spectroscopy serves as a crucial tool in uncovering the chemistry and impacts of environmental interfaces.

My name is Vicki Grassian, and I am currently a distinguished professor at the University of California, San Diego. I started my career at Albany University, where I received my bachelors degree and then my masters degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before going to UC Berkeley for my Ph.D.

My research in this area evolved over time. When I began my academic career, my research focused on surfaces that were important in heterogeneous catalysis. I then realized I could apply my background in surface chemistry to understanding complex environmental interfaces, i.e., their chemistry and impacts. I then started this new research area around the time I became an associate professor. It was then that I began to develop a strong interest in the environment, striving to understand broadly how interfaces play a role in the chemistry of the environment.

First of all, there is a wide range of environmental interfaces, such as particulate matter in the air and the surfaces of those particles, as well as minerals in groundwater and the interface between those solid minerals and the water system above it that may contain contaminants. These interfaces significantly impact air quality and water quality. They can even affect the climate because particles can nucleate clouds. Particles in the stratosphere can also play a role in the ozone layer. Environmental interfaces have critical impacts on healthincluding human health, ecosystem health, and planetary health.

I think people are not aware of environmental interfaces. For example, here in San Diego, you can look out at the Pacific Ocean, which has an air-water interface. While polluted waters prompt warnings against swimming, there are less obvious processes occurring, like the exchange between the water and the air. Were becoming more aware of these interactions in San Diego, particularly as we confront issues with sewer runoff and contamination into the Pacific Ocean. This awareness is leading to a growing demand for improvements to ensure both the quality of the air we breathe and the water we use.

One of the biggest challenges was getting people to recognize the importance of this area and our approach. My expertise in surface science and surface chemistry was typically conducted in an ultra-high vacuum on pristine single-crystal surfaces and addressed issues related to heterogeneous catalysis. I aimed to apply this knowledge to more complex environmental systems, specifically environmental surfaces and interfaces. Initially, there was skepticism that this could be done.

Doubts often manifested in the peer review process. For instance, I would submit a paper, it would be reviewed, and then I would have to revise it, sometimes repeatedlymore times than typical. However, we persevered through these challenges. Ultimately, our papers were published, and, most gratifyingly, they became highly cited benchmark papers.

Regarding grant proposals, we often heard criticisms like, This is too complicated. You wouldnt be able to understand anything. Yes, it was complex, but we were able to design experiments that allowed us to learn a great deal. We, my graduate and undergraduate students, postdoctoral scientists, and I embraced these challenges, pushed forward, and paved the way in this new area of research with great tenacity.

In our research on atmospheric aerosols, weve developed a conceptual framework to understand the chemistry of various types of aerosols, such as mineral dust aerosols. Earth has numerous deserts and arid regions, which are likely to expand due to climate change. Once airborne, this dust can be transported at great distances, significantly affecting the particulate matter load in the atmosphere.

We have thus studied how reactions on these particles can alter their composition. For instance, we have demonstrated that calcium carbonate, a crucial mineral in regulating atmospheric CO2, can react with nitrogen oxides to form calcium nitrate. This transformation is significant from the particle perspective because while calcium carbonate is a solid, calcium nitrate is a liquid that absorbs water and becomes an aqueous particle. This liquid state facilitates the nucleation of aqueous clouds.

We have also examined iron-containing mineral dust particles to determine how the amount of soluble iron increases when these particles react with trace atmospheric gases. This has important environmental implications as it relates to elemental cycling and the bioavailability of iron.

Additionally, weve researched the spectral characteristics of mineral dust aerosol in the infrared spectral range, which aids in remote sensing. NASAs new program, EMIT, aims to determine the mineralogy of the Earths system to understand mineral dust aerosols better. Our data can help interpret some of the measurements they are currently making. This work underscores the broad implications of aerosol chemistry, from cloud formation to nutrient cycling in ecosystems to remote sensing analysis.

Overall, our research ties very nicely into sustainability issues, as highlighted in an Environmental Science and Technology viewpoint article I co-wrote with many others in 2007 titled Chemistry for a Sustainable Future. In that article, we highlighted the importance of research in green chemistry and processing, energy, and environmental molecular science. Our research fits into this latter category. Understanding environmental molecular processes often allows us to determine global impacts.

Image Credit:S. Singha/Shutterstock.com

Our approach to studying environmental interfaces and atmospheric aerosols specifically leverages vibrational spectroscopy as anin situprobe to understand the chemistry involved. We conduct extensive laboratory experiments aimed at deciphering the complexity of Earths atmosphere. These experiments are designed around the components we believe are crucial for understanding atmospheric chemistry.

A significant factor in our experiments is relative humidity, considering the substantial presence of water vapor in the atmosphere and its influence on chemical processes. We employ various forms of vibrational spectroscopy to achieve our research goals. This includesinfrared spectroscopy, where we utilize both transmission IR spectroscopy and attenuated total reflection IR spectroscopy and design/modify a variety of different types ofinfrared cells to do these studies.

Additionally, we integrate atomic force microscopy with infrared spectroscopy to enhance our analysis capabilities. This multi-faceted approach allows us to gain a deeper understanding of how atmospheric conditions affect chemical reactions on aerosol surfaces.

More recently, weve been incorporating optical photothermal infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy into our studies on environmental interfaces. These techniques, which adhere to different selection rules, complement each other and enhance our analytical capabilities based on the specific problems and length scales we are investigating. This combination has provided valuable insights into various chemical processesas well as climate-relevant properties.

Vibrational spectroscopy is particularly powerful because i
t probes individual molecules, ions, and specific functional group moieties, all of which have well-defined spectral characteristics. However, when these are placed in different environmental contexts, their vibrational spectra can change slightly. These subtle changes are informative as they reveal details about the local molecular environment, which influences their reactivity, light absorption, and even interaction with solar radiation in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

We utilize these techniques, which fall under the broad umbrella of vibrational spectroscopy, to effectively probe and understand the chemistry and dynamics at these crucial environmental interfaces.

Over the years, we have collaborated with theorists to understand and interpret our data better. We have also worked with atmospheric chemistry modelers to integrate our findings into their models. Additionally, we cooperate with researchers who conduct field measurements to enhance their understanding of atmospheric conditions.

As for machine learning and AI, these technologies are increasingly becoming part of everyones research toolkit, including ours. We incorporate them both through our modeling collaborations and in rethinking how we design our experiments.

Yes, we recently conducted a study on sulfur oxidation chemistry, a topic that has been well-understood for decades. However, traditionally, this chemistry has been explored in the lab in the bulk aqueous phase, i.e., essentially in a beaker.

Our approach has been different. We use spectroscopic probes to examine these reactions at much smaller, micron-size scales that are more relevant to atmospheric conditions, allowing us to see how the interface influences the chemistry. We have been utilizing confocal Raman spectroscopy to study aqueous aerosols ranging from one to a hundred microns in size and observing how size affects the rates of these reactions. This has led us to incorporate interfacial chemistry into our models.

In a recent talk, I presented a lot of unpublished data, including findings on environmental DNA, which exists free in the environment rather than within cells. There is a hypothesis suggesting that if DNA adheres to surfaces in the environment, it may be protected from degradation. So, we have begun investigating whether DNA adsorbed onto mineral oxide surfaces retains its structure, specifically its typical B-form, which has a distinct handedness and structure.

Our preliminary findings indicate that the interaction between DNA and the mineral surfaces can significantly affect the DNAs structure, and we are using spectroscopy to probe these interactions.

This is an exciting area of research for us, and we are currently drafting papers on our initial results. As we delve deeper, were uncovering more questions that were eager to explore. Its particularly gratifying for me as this ties back to one of my first research papers, written many years ago, which also focused onthe structure of DNA.

At the award symposium yesterday, the experience was incredibly gratifying. As they introduced me, they read from the nomination letter, highlighting my work with accolades and accomplishments. Sitting there, listening to them, I was beaming with pride. Knowing that your peers think so highly of your research is profoundly satisfying; it couldnt feel any better. Most importantly, it is a testament to the students and post-docs that I have worked with over the years. As the PI of the laboratory, I spend a lot of time guiding my students and post-docs, but they are the ones in the lab who make everything work and collect the spectra we analyze. What is most impressive is the labs that many of them now lead in academics, national laboratories, and industry. I am so amazed and proud of their successes and their efforts in developing and utilizing spectroscopic probes of environmental interfaces.

Pittcon Thought Leader: Vicki GrassianPlay

Pittcon is an essential meeting in the field, and it has been for over 75 years. It stands at the forefront ofanalytical chemistryand analytical techniques. If you are looking to discover what is new in the industry, you should attend Pittcon. At the exposition, you can see all the latest toolsnew software, advanced instruments, and more. It is a significant event for those in the industry as they prepare extensively to showcase their latest innovations at Pittcon.

Beyond the exposition, there are also exceptional technical talks. Pittcon uniquely brings together professionals from industry, academia, and national labs, offering a comprehensive view of the latest advancements in analytical chemistry and instrumentation. There truly is no other meeting like it.

Over the years, I have accumulated several memorable experiences at Pittcon. My first interaction with Pittcon was as a brand-new assistant professor. I had just started at the University of Iowa and decided to drive to Chicago for the conference. I was only two months into my role and was eager to explore the latest instrumentation and networking opportunities that Pittcon offered. I remember feeling quite intimidated by everything, including by the titans of the field present at the time.

Later on, I had the opportunity to be an invited speaker at Pittcon. They treated their invited speakers very well, providing not only a platform for technical talks but also organizing enjoyable social events. It was a fantastic experience.

In another year, I co-chaired a symposium with my colleague Kimberly Prather at Pittcon, also held in Chicago, which turned out to be a wonderfully successful event. Following the symposium, a promising individual approached me with his CV, inquiring about postdoctoral opportunities. Although I was not actively seeking a post-doc at the time, his resume impressed me enough to invite him for an interview. He turned out to be one of the brightest minds I have had the pleasure of working with. Interestingly, he now works for Thermo-Fisher and is most likely attending Pittcon.

Now, at Pittcon's 75th anniversary, as the recipient of the Spectroscopy Award, I reflect on these past 30 years attending the conference. It is truly remarkable to see how integral Pittcon has been to my professional journey, culminating in this significant recognition.

Vicki H. Grassian is a Distinguished Professor and the Distinguished Chair in Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. She is also the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Physical Sciences. Research in the Grassian group focuses on the chemistry and impacts of environmental interfaces as it relates to atmospheric aerosols, aqueous microdroplets, engineered and geochemical nanomaterials and indoor surfaces. She has developed and utilized a wide range of different spectroscopic techniques to probe these interfaces throughout her career. Her contributions have been recognized through multiple awards and honors including the 2024 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award, 2023 ACS Geochemistry Division Medal, 2021 American Chemical Society National Award in Surface Chemistry, 2020 Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization Award, 2019 IUPAC Distinguished Woman in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award, 2019 William H. Nichols Medal - New York Section of the American Chemical Society, and the 2018 American Institute of Chemists Chemical Pioneer Award. She is a fellow of several societies including the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was ele
cted a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Pittcon.

For more information on this source, please visit Pittcon.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited (T/A) AZoNetwork, the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and Conditions of use of this website.

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Exploring Environmental Interfaces with Spectroscopy - AZoM

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry job with Soka University of America | 37669867 – The Chronicle of Higher Education

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The Life Sciences concentration at Soka University of America (SUA) invites applications for a full-time tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry beginning August 1st, 2025.

The successful candidate will demonstrate their ability to excite and engage classes and laboratories of 16 or fewer students, to develop a productive program of research and scholarship, and to engage in service. This position will support SUAs Life Sciences concentration and robust General Education curriculum housed in a state-of-the-art science teaching and research facility.

Responsibilities:

The primary duties of this position are teaching courses in Organic Chemistry. These courses will include Organic Chemistry I & II, a project-based Organic Chemistry laboratory, and introductory chemistry according to the needs of the University. In addition, all faculty teach one or more courses in SUAs cross-disciplinary General Education curriculum (e.g. Core, Modes of Inquiry, or Learning Cluster. For course descriptions, see the undergraduate catalog at https://www.soka.edu/academics/ikeda-college-undergraduate-studies/general-education-curriculum ). All courses should engage students via project-based and active learning approaches suitable for small class sizes. The teaching load per academic year is five courses between August and May.

The successful candidate should have a well-defined plan to maintain an active research program involving undergraduates. SUA provides resources to support faculty research year-round with undergraduates through institutional research funds and student research assistantships. All SUA graduates complete a capstone (senior thesis), and successful applicants should be able to participate as mentors for students. The faculty member will be responsible for operating, maintaining, and training users on a Bruker 400 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer.

All faculty are also expected to take part in service roles within their academic units as well as faculty governance.

Candidates should demonstrate responsiveness toward and understanding of diverse student backgrounds, especially regarding socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, culture, ability/disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The successful candidate will also demonstrate a commitment to the universitys mission to develop global citizens.

Required Qualifications:

Applicants from all fields of Organic Chemistry are welcome, with a preference for interdisciplinary researchers in fields relevant to our Life Sciences concentration, which is designed to prepare students for careers in science, biotechnology, and medicine. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. Candidates will preferably have teaching experience in Organic Chemistry.

Soka University of America:

Soka University of America (SUA), located in Aliso Viejo, California, is a private liberal arts college founded on the principles of peace, human rights, and the sanctity of life. It offers a unique and globally focused education with a commitment to fostering a learning environment that emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, and intercultural understanding. SUA's small student body, approximately 450 undergraduates, ensures personalized attention and a close-knit academic community. The university's curriculum is rooted in the liberal arts tradition and incorporates a strong international perspective, requiring students to study abroad for a semester. Faculty members at SUA have the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary teaching and research, supported by state-of-the-art facilities and a strong commitment to faculty development and academic freedom. The campus is known for its beautiful architecture, serene environment, and a culture that values dialogue, diversity, and the holistic development of its students.

Application Instructions & Required Documentation:

Applicants should submit the following materials: (1) Letter of application addressing the required qualifications; (2) Curriculum vitae; (3) A teaching statement that describes their teaching experience in relevant courses, specifically a philosophy that should reflect how the candidate would address teaching needs in a liberal arts environment and incorporate diverse identities and viewpoints through their teaching and/or scholarship (maximum two pages, single-spaced); (4) Statement of research interests and plan, detailing how undergraduate students will be involved, major equipment needs, and means to fulfill the NMR responsibilities described above (maximum two pages, single-spaced); and (5) Name and contact information for three references (references will be requested prior to the phone interview)

Applicants who could enrich campus diversity are especially encouraged to apply. Review of completed applications will begin on September 27th, 2024, and will continue until the position is filled.

Employment is contingent on the completion of a successful background check.

Benefits and Salary:Soka University of Americaoffers an excellent benefits package for full-time faculty that includes medical, dental, vision, retirement, dependent tuition remission, and faculty home loans. The salary range for this position is $94,000 - $104,000 and will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Please apply by submitting your application through Interfolio using this link:

http://apply.interfolio.com/147977

Email: facultyrecruiting@soka.edu

Soka University of America is an equal-opportunity employer.

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Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry job with Soka University of America | 37669867 - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Job cuts sweeping across pharmaceuticals | Business – Chemistry World

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Job cuts in the pharmaceuticals industry have surged in the first half of 2024, with large companies including Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), Bayer and Pfizer seeing thousands of redundancies.

BMS began a wave of restructuring that will see 2200 jobs cut including 860 in Lawrenceville, US. The firm says the cuts will save $1.5 billion (1.2 billion) in annual costs by the end of 2025. In March, Evonik said it had completed the first phase of a reorganization with a target of cutting 400 million (340 million) annually by the end of 2026, including 2000 job cuts worldwide, of which 1500 will be in Germany.

Meanwhile, in the first three months of this year, Bayer cut over 1500 positions mostly from management, as part of a three year rejuvenation programme aimed at reducing bureaucracy in the face of challenges from patent expiries and litigation in the US arising from its takeover of Monsanto.

In the US, Japanese drugmaker Takeda is shutting a research centre in San Diego and cutting jobs at sites in Massachusetts this year. It also closed a plant for viral gene therapy in Austria, with the loss of almost 200 jobs.

A lot of these firms are facing some patent losses and some areas where they need to restructure and optimise, says Damien Conover, head of health equity strategy at Morningstar, a market analyst. I wouldnt expect too much pullback from oncology or immunology. Those are areas of pretty good focus, he adds. You might see pullback in areas like respiratory, or womens health.

In October 2023, Pfizer began a multi-year drive to save around $4 billion by the end of 2024. This included cutting around 500 staff at its site in Sandwich, UK, with some parts of the development and manufacturing facility since acquired by Asymchem Laboratories. In a regulatory filing in May, the company outlined plans to reduce costs by an additional $1.5 billion by the end of 2027.

Pfizer had ramped up development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic, which drove a rise in profits (measured as net income) from $16 billion in 2019 to over $31 billion in 2022. Demand for its vaccine and antiviral combination Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir, ritonavir) have since fallen substantially, and the company reported net income of just $2 billion in 2023. The company also paid $43 billion for Seagen a leader in antibody-drug conjugates in December 2023, triggering some job losses and halting construction of a new Seagen plant in Switzerland.

Biotechs look a lot like big pharma now; theyre facing a lot more patent losses than in the previous decade

Pfizer is now in a cost-cutting mode after investing heavily, says Conover. The magnitude of cuts was higher than what I was expecting, and it looks like its on track to achieve most of those cuts, which will really help profitability.

The big companies are at the mercy of the markets, and the bean counters are looking avidly at where to save costs, says Chris Coe, head of life sciences at executive recruitment firm Kingsley Gate. But overall the demand for talent has gone up, he asserts. It is going to be tough for people being laid off, given the large numbers happening at once, he acknowledges, but it will also benefit medium sized businesses that are looking to grow.

In the biotechnology sector, Genentech is cutting 436 jobs in San Francisco, US. Illumina also instigated layoffs as part of $100 million in cost cutting, following its failed attempt to acquire cancer test maker Grail.

News website Fierce Biotech has been tracking industry layoffs since 2022, recording 187 total layoffs among biotech companies last year, up from 119 in 2022. Companies announcing recent job cuts include Exscientia, Biomarin, Emergent BioSolutions, Benevolent, Amylyx and CureVac.

Small companies can have very different staffing requirements at different stages of product development, and can be strongly affected by individual project outcomes. Hence such layoffs have some uniqueness, but there are also some general trends, says Conover. These companies go through cycles where theyre losing exclusivity on certain products, and they need to pivot resources from those to new products.

He adds, if they lose exclusivity and dont have a next wave of innovation, then you will see some cost cutting happen.

There has also been a shift due to the maturity of the biopharma sector. Biotechs look a lot like big pharma now, because theyre facing a lot more patent losses than they had in the previous decade, says Conover.

While there was abundant financing during the pandemic for pharma and biotech, there was a precipitous drop thereafter. The financing windows are better than they were a year ago, but not as good as during Covid, says Conover.

Coe notes that fewer companies are floating on stock exchanges, for example. We havent seen the access to capital really tick up, he explains. The venture capitalists had been reasonably bullish about the middle of this year, but it has been slow to improve.

There has also been a wave of acquisitions, which can trigger some layoffs. Examples include big companies buying into radiopharmaceuticals and antibody-drug conjugates, but also Merck & Co buying immunology specialist Prometheus; AbbVie buying Cerevel, with its neuroscience pipeline; and Roche acquiring Telavant, targeting inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. Conover predicts that acquisitions will subside somewhat, but adds that he would expect to see more acquisitions in the range of $15 billion.

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Job cuts sweeping across pharmaceuticals | Business - Chemistry World

Can the Gophers men’s basketball team create chemistry this summer? – Star Tribune

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Introduction: Host Michael Rand starts with the Twins, who won again Thursday with a familiar recent formula. Carlos Correa has been on fire at the plate, and he delivered three more hits in a 6-2 win over Oakland. Joe Ryan, the Twins' best starting pitcher all season, added seven strong innings. The Twins need that from their elite players, and they have been delivering lately. Plus Rand gets into the Falcons' penalty for tampering with Kirk Cousins and Trevor Lawrence's big new deal.

8:00: Star Tribune Gophers men's basketball writer Marcus Fuller joins the show to talk about another offseason with a lot of roster turnover. Can a senior-heavy team filled with holdovers and newcomers find chemistry quickly next season? Plus Fuller has thoughts on new college sports rules and the NBA draft.

36:00: Rand implores the Wolves to pick a rotation-ready player in the draft.

Listen and subscribe to the Daily Delivery: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | iHeartRadio

The podcast archive is here.

Questions? Comments? Long-winded diatribes about nothing in particular? E-mail me at michael.rand@startribune.com.

Follow me on Twitter @RandBall and Star Tribune sports @StribSports

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Can the Gophers men's basketball team create chemistry this summer? - Star Tribune

Much of the Nord Stream gas remained in the sea – EurekAlert

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image:

The researchers took water samples in an area northeast of Bornholm, near the site of the Nord Stream leaks. These showed significantly elevated levels of methane.

Credit: Adele Maciute

Much of the methane released into the southern Baltic Sea from the Nord Stream gas pipeline has remained in the water. This is shown by measurements taken by researchers from the University of Gothenburg.

At the end of September 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea exploded east of Bornholm and one of the largest unnatural methane gas emissions ever was a fact. The methane gas from the pipeline created large bubbles at the water surface and measurements showed elevated levels of methane in the atmosphere.

Expedition within a week

But much of the methane never reached the surface and dissolved in the water instead. This is according to a scientific study published in Scientific Reports.

Thanks to fortunate circumstances, we were able to organise an expedition to the area of the leak in less than a week. Based on what we measured, we estimate that between 10,000 and 50,000 tonnes of methane remained in the sea in dissolved form, says Katarina Abrahamsson, professor of marine chemistry at the University of Gothenburg.

The methane was spread over large areas and has dissolved in the water, where some is taken care of by bacteria. Methane is also normally present in the water, formed during the decomposition of organic material in the bottom sediments.

Different isotopes

In our study, we have been able to distinguish the methane coming from the Nord Stream leak from that naturally present in the water, thanks to the fact that the methane from the gas pipeline has a different isotopic composition than that which seeps up from the bottom sediments. This is a strength of our study, says Katarina Abrahamsson.

The water in the sea normally lies in different layers due to differences in temperature and salinity. Despite the fact that the methane leaked out of the gas pipeline at great speed and in large quantities, the researchers could not observe any major mixing in the water masses. The stratification that normally occurs at the end of September was stable. The levels of the leaked methane therefore varied greatly in the water. The researchers assume that the methane was diluted in a larger body of water later in the autumn when the water was remixed due to falling water temperature.

Unclear biological impact

It is too early to say what impact the increased methane levels will have on biological life in the southern Baltic Sea.

The expedition also included researchers who took plankton samples in the affected area, the analyses of which are not yet complete, says Katarina Abrahamsson.

Three months after the first expedition, a return visit was made to the area and new measurements were taken. Preliminary results show that bacterial activity has been high during these three months. The researchers do not yet know how the phytoplankton and zooplankton have been affected by this.

Scientific Reports

Observational study

Methane plume detection after the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosion in the Baltic Sea

19-Jun-2024

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Much of the Nord Stream gas remained in the sea - EurekAlert

Glassy gel is hard as plastic and stretches 7 times its length – New Scientist

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Glassy gels are a new class of materials that are as hard as plastic but extremely stretchy

Meixiang Wang, NC State University

When you think of gel, you might imagine goo but a new gel-like material has been engineered to be soft enough to stretch to almost seven times its original length while still being strong and clear, like glass.

Michael Dickey at North Carolina State University says his team discovered these glassy gels when his student, Meixiang Wang, was experimenting with ionic liquids and kept finding unexpected mechanical properties. The materials they devised are more than 50 per cent liquid, but as strong as the plastics used for water bottles, while also being very stretchy and sticky. There are a bunch of cool things about them, he says.

Each glassy gel consists of long molecules called polymers mixed with an ionic liquid, a fluid that is essentially a salt in liquid form. The gel is a transparent solid that can withstand up to 400 times atmospheric pressure, but also stretch very easily up to 670 per cent. Dickey says that this could make it well-suited for building soft robotic grippers or 3D printing deformable materials.

He and his colleagues made glassy gels from several different mixtures of polymers and liquid salts and found that their strength and stretch depended on the precise ratio used.

Just by changing the ratio of two ingredients, you can go from something very stretchy like a rubber band, to something almost as hard as glass, says Dickey.

This is because the materials get their stretchiness from the ionic liquid settling into spaces between the stiffer polymer molecules and pushing them apart, while their strength comes from the electrostatic attraction between the liquids charged particles and the polymers, which prevents them from fully breaking away from each other.

The glassy gels can also self-heal a cut or break can be repaired by applying heat, which makes molecules on the broken edges reconnect. Richard Hoogenboom at Ghent University in Belgium says this could make them useful in some instances when conventional plastics are used, but the formula may have to be tweaked so that it only softens at temperatures high enough so this doesnt happen accidentally.

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Glassy gel is hard as plastic and stretches 7 times its length - New Scientist

Chemists create new-to-nature enzymes with boronic acid – Tech Explorist

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Boronic acid has been a staple in organic chemistry for many years despite its absence in any organism. According to Gerard Roelfes, a professor at the University of Groningen, it leads to unique chemical reactions not typically found in nature.

Roelfes and his team engineered an enzyme with boronic acid at its reactive center and used directed evolution to enhance its selectivity and catalytic power. Additionally, enzymatic reactions offer a more sustainable alternative to traditional chemical reactions, as they occur at lower temperatures and do not require toxic solvents.

The significance of boron in organic chemistry goes back several decades and was acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1979. While the use of boron as a catalyst has gained interest in recent years, its application in the chemical industry remains limited.

According to Roelfes, boron catalysis presently suffers from slow reaction rates and is not well-suited for enantioselective reactions, which are crucial for producing chiral molecules with specific pharmaceutical benefits. This limitation poses a challenge in selectively generating the desired molecular structure, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector, where the distinct hands of chiral molecules can have varying effects.

To make this possible, we set out to introduce boron into an enzyme. Our group has a long history of designing enzymes that dont exist in nature, said Roelfes.

The Roelfes group successfully utilized an expanded genetic code to incorporate a non-natural amino acid featuring a reactive boronic acid group into an enzyme. This breakthrough approach allows for the precise determination of the amino acids placement in a protein at the DNA level.

Once the enzyme with the boronic acid at its reactive center was created, directed evolution techniques were employed to enhance its efficiency, leading to accelerated catalysis.

Furthermore, by placing the boronic acid in the chiral context of an enzyme, we were able to achieve highly enantioselective catalysis, said Roelfes. The reaction shows how to harness borons catalytic power in enzymes.

Utilizing enzymes for the production of organic compounds is crucial for the pharmaceutical industry. As part of the industrys focus on more sustainable drug manufacturing methods, biocatalysis is being explored as a substitute for traditional chemical processes.

The University of Groningen is actively involved in advancing this initiative, with multiple research groups within the Faculty of Science and Engineering dedicated to developing biocatalytic solutions for the chemical industry. Professor Roelfes and his team are particularly focused on enhancing their boronic acid enzymes and pioneering the creation of novel enzymes not found in nature.

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NSF Awards Regional Training Hub Grant to Chemical Engineering’s Wickramasinghe and Nayani – University of Arkansas Newswire

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From left, Ranil Wickramasinghe and Karthik Nayani

The National Science Foundation has awarded Ranil Wickramasinghe and Karthik Nayani a five-year $500,000 grant to develop a regional workforce training hub in Arkansas. Wickramasinghe, a Distinguished Professor, and Nayani, an assistant professor, are both faculty in the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas.

This Skills Training in Advanced Research & Technology (START) site hosted by the Membrane, Science, Engineering and Technology Center (MAST Center) will train the regional workforce on biopharmaceuticals-related projects. Over the course of the award, students from two-year institutions will participate in ongoing MAST Center projects in biopharmaceuticals and receive mentoring to prepare them for industrial internships.

The site will be created in collaboration with faculty from Northwest Arkansas Community College, Lashall Bates and Gary Bates. Community college faculty in the program will also participate in MAST Center research projects and develop learning modules on bioseparations, bioprocessing and biopharmaceuticals that they can use in their classrooms.

The START site at the MAST center will have broad-ranging implications for the workforce in the area, with a goal of creating and retaining local talent for its nascent biotechnology-based industry. The participants will increase their knowledge in membrane-based research used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Participants will also have access to multiple professional development experiences at the U of A. After participating in START, graduates of two-year institutions will have the opportunity to tout a basic understanding of membrane-based processes and biopharmaceutical manufacturing in job interviews.

The START site builds on the relationship between the MAST Center and community college.

"The MAST Center has been able to directly enable NWACC undergraduates to complete four-year degree programs. Some are even pursuing master's degrees," said Wickramasinghe. "This has been particularly rewarding."

Nayani sees this as the next step in workforce development for such students.

"I have had the opportunity to work with and train NWAAC students for a couple of years now, including lab research and field trips to industrial sites. I have found them to be engaging and pick up on research quite fast; it has been a rewarding experience. The START site really allows us to ramp up the workforce training efforts in a big way," he said.

Wickramasinghe is a Distinguished Professor in the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering and holds the Ross E. Martin Chair in Emerging Technologies. He is the director of the MAST Center, a multi-campus NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center which hosts the START site through its outreach program to local community colleges.

Nayani is an assistant professor and holds the Louis Owen Professorship in Chemical Engineering. He is the recipient of an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund grant and USDA New Investigator award. His research involves the design of a range of biologically and technologically relevant soft materials to address societal challenges in the realm of health, environment and materials.

About the Department of Chemical Engineering: Chemical engineering has been a part of the University of Arkansas curriculum since 1903. Today, the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering has an enrollment of over 300 students in its undergraduate and graduate degree programs and houses five endowed chairs and eight endowed professorships to support its faculty. Faculty expertise includes cellular engineering, chemical process safety, advanced materials, computational modeling, and membrane separations. A wide range of fundamental and applied research is conducted in the areas of energy, health, sustainability, and computational chemical engineering. The department is also home to the Chemical Hazards Research Center and is one of three national sites for the Membrane Science, Engineering, & Technology (MAST) Center. The Department of Chemical Engineering is named for alumnus Ralph E. Martin (B.S.Ch.E.'58, M.S.Ch.E.'60) in recognition of his 2005 endowment gift.

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NSF Awards Regional Training Hub Grant to Chemical Engineering's Wickramasinghe and Nayani - University of Arkansas Newswire