News

At the Chemistry Departments annual postgraduate symposium, Robert Deller (GibsonGroup) and Athina anastasaki (HaddletonGroup) won the prizes for the best PhD Theses. The Thesis prize is Sponsored by the Faculty of Science.

The journal editors have selected a recent paper in Chemistry–A European Journal from Philip Chan’s group as a Hot Paper. The work describes a synthetic method to prepare 3a,6-methanoisoindole esters by gold(I)-catalyzed tandem 1,2-acyloxy migration/Nazarov cyclization and Diels-Alder reaction of 1,4,9-dienyne esters. One example was found to inhibit binding of tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) to the tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1) site and TNF-induced nuclear factor k-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-kB) activation in cell at a half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) value of 6.6 mM. The study showed the isoindolyl derivative to exhibit low toxicity toward human hepatocellular liver carcinoma (HepG2) cells and its possible mode of activity based on molecular modeling analysis.

The full article is available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1521-3765/homepage/2111_hotpaper.html

Philip Chan’s group have this week published a paper in Journal of the American Chemical Society describing a synthetic method to prepare tricyclic bridged heptenones and hexenones from gold(I)-catalyzed double cycloisomerization of 1,11-dien-3,9-diyne benzoates. The work found a divergence in product selectivity could be achieved by fine-tuning the steric nature of the ligand of the Au(I) catalyst. In the presence of the catalyst [MeCNAu(JohnPhos)]⁺SbF₆^-, a tandem 1,3-acyloxy migration/metallo-Nazarov cyclization/1,6-enyne addition/Cope rearrangement of the substrate selectively occurred to afford the seven-membered ring system. In contrast, with the [MeCNAu(Me₄tBuXPhos)]⁺SbF₆^- catalyst, the 1,11-dien-3,9-diyne benzoate was observed to undergo a more rapid tandem 1,3-acyloxy migration/metallo-Nazarov cyclization/[4 + 2]-cyclization pathway to give the bridged hexenone.

The full article is available online at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.5b02377

The Bugg and Gibson groups are involved in 2 new projects intended to promote translation of new technologies. These projects are funded by the Industrial Biocatalyst program supported by Innovate UK, BBSRC and EPSRC and span a range of UK universities and companies.

Adrian Chaplin has been award one of this years Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prizes from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Józef Lewandowski in collaboration with Lyndon Emsley (EPFL, Lausanne/ENS-Lyon) and Martin Blackledge (IBS, Grenoble) reports in Science on a direct observation of hierarchy of protein and solvent motions in protein conformational energy landscape. The findings of the study employing a series of variable temperature magic angle spinning multinuclear NMR relaxation measurements on a nanocrystalline protein reconcile divergent interpretations from techniques that are individually sensitive to dynamic phenomena occurring on different time scales and at different locations in protein-solvent systems. Read more in Science.

'It appears that a series of catalysts developed in the Warwick Chemistry department have the ability to achieve the impossible: 'Impossible Ketone and Imine Reductions Made Possible by the Ruthenium Tethered Catalyst' reads the headline of the Johnson Matthey (JM) advert on the back of the April 2015 issue of Chemistry World. The tethered ruthenium catalysts described in the advert were first developed and reported by Professor Martin Wills and his group, and have since been developed extensively at Warwick and adopted by companies worldwide, including JM.

Dr. Luke Rochford and Prof. Tim Jones along with Alex Ramadan and collaborators from Imperial College London publish in Advanced Materials Interfaces on the use of solution-grown copper iodide crystals as substrates for templated growth of a nonplanar phthalocyanine molecule using organic molecular beam deposition.

Sebastien Perrier has been awarded a €1.7 million Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council for his work on tubular supramolecular polymers. These structures, pioneered by the Perrier group, are based on the assembly of cyclic peptide/polymer conjugates into nanotubes, held together by supramolecular interactions. They have a range of unique physical and chemical properties, and the ERC grant will allow the group to develop these systems further as drug delivery vectors. Recent work has shown that they can act efficiently to deliver anticancer drugs to cancer cells and enhance the drug activity, and the 5 years’ ERC funding will support further studies in this area.

Dave Haddleton has recently been given the PTN (Polymer Technology Netherlands) 2015 “Medema Award”.

The annual prize is awarded to prolific polymer scientists who interact, or have close ties, with polymer research in the Netherlands. The award is named after the late PTN chairman, Dick Medema, who was the former R&D director at Shell.

The list of previous award winners can be found at: http://www.ptn.nu/award/index.htm.

Vincent Poon, a PhD student in Christophe Corre’s group, has attended Parliament to present his research on exploiting soil bacteria to unlock the production of novel antibiotics. Vincent presented to a range of politicians and a panel of expert judges, as part of SET for Britain on Monday 9th March.

For further information about the event, please visit http://www.setforbritain.org.uk/.

Sarah-Jane Richards, of the Gibson Group, has been awarded an IAS Fellowship. This will enable to further her work into new methods for the detection and neutralisation of pathogens developed during her PhD (e.g. Chem Sci 2014 5, 1621, Angew. Chem.2012, 51, 7812). This fellowship will enable her to translate these findings into more sophisticated sensory systems.