RSC Chemical Biology Blog

RSC Chemical Biology and RSC Pharmaceutics are delighted to welcome papers for a joint themed collection on ‘Endocytosis and Cellular Delivery’, Guest Edited by Prof. Alexander Kros (Leiden University, ORCID 0000-0002-3983-3048), Prof. Vince Rotello (University of Massachusetts, ORCID 0000-0002-5184-5439) and Prof. Georgina Such (University of Melbourne, ORCID 0000-0002-2868-5799).

This collection will explore how both biological and synthetic tools can be leveraged to understand the impact of material structure on the migration of specific cellular barriers, aiming to enhance the delivery efficiency of macromolecules and delivery systems such as liposomes, lipid nanoparticles, and polymeric carriers. Key topics will include the following:

1. Novel tools to understand and quantify cellular trafficking of nanoparticles and their cargo, including processes such as endosomal escape, membrane fusion, cytosolic delivery and nuclear localisation.
2. Fundamental understanding of how nanoparticle structure impacts cellular interactions.
3. Design of new delivery systems that incorporate intelligent strategies to migrate biological barriers for more effective therapeutic delivery.
4. Novel tools, methodologies to understand and quantify cell uptake and the fate of the multiple components in drug delivery systems.
5. Tools/basic understanding on the role of the protein corona on the fate of the particles beyond the very general basic level.

The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2025

Articles can be submitted via the respective journal’s website, rsc.li/rsc-chembio or rsc.li/RSCPharma. Information on the journals’ scopes can be found at the bottom of this message. We would be grateful if, upon submission you would mention that your manuscript is intended for this themed collection.  Please note that all submissions are subject to the journal’s normal peer review processes, an initial assessment to confirm the manuscript’s suitability for full peer review.

Promotion of the collection is scheduled for  mid-2025, with articles published online as soon as they’re accepted.

About RSC Chemical Biology

Led by Hiroaki Suga (University of Tokyo), RSC Chemical Biology is dedicated to publishing and disseminating the most exceptionally significant, breakthrough findings of interest to the chemical biology community. All submissions are handled by our experienced and internationally recognised Associate Editors. For more information on the journal, please visit the journal homepage.

About RSC Pharmaceutics

RSC Pharmaceutics acknowledges how chemistry and related disciplines can make a big difference to addressing health challenges. The journal provides a platform to publish crucial research on pharmaceutics, covering emerging technologies and techniques in pharmaceutics, including drug delivery, precision medicine, and enhanced drug targeting. Publications in RSC Pharmaceutics have the potential to drive real change in worldwide health. For more information on the journal, please visit the journal homepage.

As gold open access journals, there are no barriers to accessing content and your research article will reach an international audience.

Article processing charges apply at RSC Chemical Biology – please see the journal web site for details on fees, discounts, and waivers. RSC Pharmaceutics is currently waiving article processing charges for all submissions.

RSC Chemical Biology is delighted to welcome papers for its latest themed collection on ‘Biomolecular Technologies’, Sheel Dodani (The University of Texas at Dallas; ORCID 0000-0003-0271-6080) and Ariel Furst (Massachusetts Institute of Technology; ORCID 0000-0001-9583-9703).

Contributions are welcome that engineer the biomolecules of life to create recombinant or whole cell technologies. New engineering strategies and resulting technologies, including but not limited to biologics, catalysts, and sensors, are welcome for this themed collection on emerging topics in biomolecular technologies.

Ideally, computational work should be experimentally validated wherever possible. For articles to be accepted into the collection, the applications and relevance to chemical biology must be clear.

The deadline for submissions is 14 October 2024. Submit your work to the collection now!

Promotion of the collection is scheduled for early 2025, with articles published online as soon as they’re accepted.

Authors are welcome to submit original research in the form of a Communication or Full Paper. Articles can be submitted via our website: rsc.li/rsc-chembio. When submitting your manuscript, please mention that it is intended for this themed collection in the “notes to the editor” box. The Editorial Office reserves the right to check suitability of submissions for both the journal and the scope of the collection, and inclusion of accepted articles in the final themed collection is not guaranteed.

Explore other open calls for papers from RSC journals!

About RSC Chemical Biology:

Led by Hiroaki Suga (University of Tokyo), RSC Chemical Biology is dedicated to publishing and disseminating the most exceptionally significant, breakthrough findings of interest to the chemical biology community. All submissions are handled by our experienced and internationally recognised Associate Editors. For more information on the journal, please visit the journal homepage.

As a gold open access journal, there are no barriers to accessing content and your research article will reach an international audience. Article processing charges apply – please see the journal web site for details on fees, discounts, and waivers.

RSC Chemical Biology is now indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), PubMed Central, Scopus and Web of Science: Emerging Sources Citation Index. Find out more about the journal and submit your work at rsc.li/rsc-chembio.

We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology has now been published online!

Read the collection

This themed collection, guest edited by Angela Casini (Technical University of Munich, Germany), Hui Chao (Sun Yat-Sen University, China), Hongzhe Sun (University of Hong Kong, China), and Christopher J. Chang (University of California, Berkeley, United States), offers articles showcasing the ongoing interest in the chemical biology of metals.

This themed collection offers articles showcasing the ongoing interest in the chemical biology of metals. Recent years have witnessed significant advances in the development of new imaging probes that can probe the physiological and pathological roles of metals in biology and/or leverage unique properties of metal coordination chemistry and metal-based medicines. In addition, significant progress has been made in understanding metallo-medicines and studying metal-based catalysis and signaling in living systems. We therefore have collected contributions that are representative of the tremendous promise and pace of growth in this area.

A small selection of the articles is shared below – please visit the above link for the full collection. All articles in RSC Chemical Biology are open access and free to read.

Editorial

Introduction to ‘Chemical biology of metals’
Angela Casini, Hui Chao, Hongzhe Sun and Christopher J. Chang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2024, 5, DOI: 10.1039/D4CB90017K

Opinions and Reviews

Copper binding and protein aggregation: a journey from the brain to the human lens
Yanahi Posadas, Carolina Sánchez-López and Liliana Quintanar
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 974–985 DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00145H

Unlocking the potential of platinum drugs: organelle-targeted small-molecule platinum complexes for improved anticancer performance
Zhiqin Deng, Shu Chen, Gongyuan Liu and Guangyu Zhu
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 1003–1013, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00087G

Communications and Papers

Discovery of cisplatin-binding proteins by competitive cysteinome profiling
Xianghe Wang, Yihai Zhang and Chu Wang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 670–674 DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00042G

The effect of metalation on antimicrobial piscidins imbedded in normal and oxidized lipid bilayers
Ana Dreab and Craig A. Bayse
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 573–586 DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00035D

We hope you enjoy this new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology.

We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology and RSC Medicinal Chemistry has now been published online.

Read the collection

This themed collection, Guest Edited by Professor Thimmaiah Govindaraju (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India), covers advancements in molecular and nanotheranostics with particular emphasis on the design of theranostic tools and their selective interaction with biomolecular targets to image and ameliorate pathological conditions. The collection is anticipated to catalyze the development of precision theranostics as advanced and personalizable tools in chemical biology and modern medicine.

The articles in the collection are listed below. Articles in RSC Chemical Biology are open access and free to read.

Editorial

Introduction to the themed collection on ‘Molecular and nanotheranostics’
Thimmaiah Govindaraju
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2024, 5, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB90050A

Reviews

Small molecules and conjugates as theranostic agents
Sumon Pratihar, Krithi K. Bhagavath and Thimmaiah Govindaraju
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 826–849, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00073G

Recent progress of small-molecule-based theranostic agents in Alzheimer’s disease
Furong Gao, Jiefang Chen, Yuancun Zhou, Letong Cheng, Ming Hu and Xiaohui Wang
RSC. Med. Chem., 2023, 14, 2231–2245, DOI: 10.1039/D3MD00330B

Papers and Communications

Single-chain multicolor-reporter templates for subcellular localization of molecular events in mammalian cells
Sung-Bae Kim, Ramasamy Paulmurugan, Nobuo Kitada and Sojiro A. Maki
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 1043–1049, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00077J

Fluorescent naphthalimide boronates as theranostics: structural investigations, confocal fluorescence and multiphoton fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy in living cells
Megan J. Green, Haobo Ge, Stephen E. Flower, Charareh Pourzand, Stanley W. Botchway, Hui-Chen Wang, Navaratnarajah Kuganathan, Gabriele Kociok-Köhn, Meng Li, Suying Xu, Tony D. James and Sofia I. Pascu
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 1082–1095, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00112A

Cationic Dextrin Nanoparticles for Effective Intracellular Delivery of Cytochrome C in Cancer Therapy
Ankita Sarkar, Sanchita Sarkhel, Deepali Bisht and Amit Jaiswal
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2024, 5, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00090G

We hope you enjoy this new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology and RSC Medicinal Chemistry.

We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology on Chemical Proteomics has now been published online.

Read the collection

This collection, Guest Edited by Dr Keriann Backus (UCLA, USA) and Dr Stephan Hacker (Leiden University, Netherlands), highlights work on applications of chemoproteomics to study the targets and off-targets of covalent and non-covalent inhibitors, to study the reactivity of amino acids in the proteome, to develop new reactive groups for photocrosslinkers, covalent inhibitors and protein labeling as well as to study post-translational modifications and cofactor binding proteome-wide.

A listing of the articles has been provided below. All articles in RSC Chemical Biology are open access and free to read.

Perspective

Finding a vocation for validation: taking proteomics beyond association and location
Marcus J. C. Long, Jinmin Liu and Yimon Aye
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 110–120, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00214K

Communications

Quantitative profiling of PTM stoichiometry by resolvable mass tags
Ying Chen, Baiyi Quan, Yuanpei Li, Yuan Liu, Wei Qin and Chu Wang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 1320–1324, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00179A

Chemoproteomic mapping of human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) interactions in cells
Abdullah A. Hassan, Jacob M. Wozniak, Zak Vilen, Weichao Li, Appaso Jadhav, Christopher G. Parker and Mia L. Huang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 1369–1374, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00176D

Papers

The covalent reactivity of functionalized 5-hydroxy-butyrolactams is the basis for targeting of fatty acid binding protein 5 (FABP5) by the neurotrophic agent MT-21
Esben B. Svenningsen, Rasmus N. Ottosen, Katrine H. Jørgensen, Marija Nisavic, Camilla K. Larsen, Bente K. Hansen, Yong Wang, Kresten Lindorff-Larsen, Thomas Tørring, Stephan M. Hacker, Johan Palmfeldt and Thomas B. Poulsen
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 1216–1229, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00161F

A peptide-crosslinking approach identifies HSPA8 and PFKL as selective interactors of an actin-derived peptide containing reduced and oxidized methionine
Aaron Maurais and Eranthie Weerapana
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 1282–1289, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00183G

Chemical proteomic analysis of bile acid-protein targets in Enterococcus faecium
Xinglin Yang, Xiaohui Zhao, Victor Chen and Howard C. Hang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 1397–1402, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00178K

Photoreactive bioorthogonal lipid probes and their applications in mammalian biology
Karthik Shanbhag, Kavita Sharma and Siddhesh S. Kamat
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 37–46, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00174H

Predicting small molecule binding pockets on diacylglycerol kinases using chemoproteomics and AlphaFold
Roberto Mendez, Minhaj Shaikh, Michael C. Lemke, Kun Yuan, Adam H. Libby, Dina L. Bai, Mark M. Ross, Thurl E. Harris and Ku-Lung Hsu
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2023, 3, 422–430, DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00057E

We hope you enjoy this new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology.

RSC Chemical Biology is delighted to welcome papers for its latest online themed collection on ‘Medicinal Chemistry Small Molecule Probes’, guest edited by John Spencer (University of Sussex, UK), Gemma Nixon (University of Liverpool, UK), and Miraz Rahman (King’s College London, UK).

Contributions are welcome which investigate general medicinal chemistry, chemical probes for imaging, proteomics, protacs, fragment-based drug discovery, covalent binders, chemical tools for protein profiling and activity modulation, and natural product inspired medicinal chemistry and chemical biology.

The deadline for submissions is 1 June 2023. Submit your work to the collection now!

Promotion of the collection is scheduled for late 2023, with articles published online as soon as they’re accepted.

Authors are welcome to submit original research in the form of a Communication or Full Paper. Articles can be submitted via our website: rsc.li/rsc-chembio. When submitting your manuscript, please mention that it is intended for this themed collection in the “notes to the editor” box. The Editorial Office reserves the right to check suitability of submissions for both the journal and the scope of the collection, and inclusion of accepted articles in the final themed collection is not guaranteed.

Explore all open calls for papers from RSC journals!

About RSC Chemical Biology:

Led by Hiroaki Suga (University of Tokyo), RSC Chemical Biology is dedicated to publishing and disseminating the most exceptionally significant, breakthrough findings of interest to the chemical biology community. All submissions are handled by our experienced and internationally recognised Associate Editors. For more information on the journal, please visit the journal homepage.

As a gold open access journal, there are no barriers to accessing content and your research article will reach an international audience. Articles accepted for publication in this themed collection will have their article processing charges waived.

RSC Chemical Biology is now indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), PubMed Central, Scopus and Web of Science: Emerging Sources Citation Index. Find out more about the journal and submit your work at rsc.li/rsc-chembio.

We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology has now been published online.

Read the collection

Guest-edited by Chengqi Yi (Peking University, China) and Yan Zhang (Nanjing University, China), this collection highlights work on bio-orthogonal chemistry, reactions and probes in labeling, manipulating, imaging and sequencing of protein, DNA, RNA and bioactive metabolites.

The article line-up is provided below. All articles in RSC Chemical Biology are open access and free to read.

Editorial

Introduction to ‘Development of bio-orthogonal tools’
Yan Zhang and Chengqi Yi
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2022, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB90045A

Reviews

Labeling and sequencing nucleic acid modifications using bio-orthogonal tools
Hui Liu, Yafen Wang and Xiang Zhou
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2022, 3, 994–1007, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00087C

Imitate to illuminate: labeling of bacterial peptidoglycan with fluorescent and bio-orthogonal stem peptide-mimicking probes
Huibin Lin, Chaoyong Yang and Wei Wang
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2022, 3, 1198–1208, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00086E

Papers

A library of Rhodamine6G-based pH-sensitive fluorescent probes with versatile in vivo and in vitro applications
Benton Swanson, Margaret Durdan, Miranda Eberle, Seth Woodbury, Ava Mauser, Jason Gregory, Boya Zhang, David Niemann, Jacob Herremans, Peter X. Ma, Joerg Lahann, Megan Weivoda, Yuji Mishina and Colin F. Greineder
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2022, 3, 748–764, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00030J

Methyltetrazine as a small live-cell compatible bioorthogonal handle for imaging enzyme activities in situ
Diana Torres-García, Merel A. T. van de Plassche, Emma van Boven, Tyrza van Leeuwen, Mirjam G. J. Groenewold, Alexi J. C. Sarris, Luuk Klein, Herman S. Overkleeft and Sander I. van Kasteren
RSC. Chem. Biol., 2022, 3, 1325–1330, DOI: 10.1039/D2CB00120A

We hope you enjoy this new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology.