RSC Chemical Biology is pleased to partner with the 1st FERROPTOSIS FRANCE SYMPOSIUM on January 26, 2024. The symposium features renowned speakers, presenting the latest developments and future trends in the field of ferroptosis.
For full details, visit https://www.ferroptosisfrance.fr/. Registrations extended until 19/01/1024. Hurry!
Register at https://www.ferroptosisfrance.fr/tickets
We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology and RSC Medicinal Chemistry has now been published online.
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 excited to introduce Sander van Kasteren as our new Associate Editor. His ground-breaking work in chemistry and immunology brings a wealth of expertise and innovation to our editorial team.
Bridging Chemistry and Immunology
Sander’s research connects the dots between chemistry and immunology, focusing on understanding early immune reactions. His innovative methods for studying antigen presentation and T-cell activation are making waves in the scientific community.
Academic Journey
Starting as an organic chemistry student in Edinburgh, Sander’s journey led him to Oxford and the lab of Prof Benjamin G. Davis. There, he contributed to MRI and histological probes for detecting early brain inflammation. His expertise grew under Prof Colin Watts in Dundee, where he worked on protease inhibitors for better antigen cross-presentation.
Leadership and Recognition
In 2012, Sander founded his own group at Leiden University and later joined the Institute of Chemical Immunology, where he’s a board member. His remarkable contributions have earned him fellowships, grants, and awards, including the 2012 Early Career Investigator Award from the British Biochemical Society.
Associate Editor Role for RSC Chemical Biology
Now, Sander van Kasteren takes on a new role as our Associate Editor, bringing his expertise to our publication. We’re thrilled to welcome him and look forward to the valuable insights he’ll bring to our community.
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
Royal Society of Chemistry
Click reactions play a crucial role in efficiently modifying complex biomolecules, particularly in the realm of biotherapeutics. The continuous challenge lies in their reversible and irreversible transformations, with chemists seeking ultimate control over molecular structures in dilute conditions and crowded environments.
In this groundbreaking article, we introduce the Click’n Lock principle, describing a novel reaction system capable of seamlessly switching from reversible to irreversible click transformations. Termed ‘TeTEx’ for ‘tetrazine – thiol exchange,’ this concept enables on-demand locking of products using bioorthogonal stimuli (dienophiles), providing a transformative switch from reversible to irreversible attachment.
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. Please note that the article processing charges are waived until mid-2022, so the journal is currently free to publish in.
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
Royal Society of Chemistry
Explore the world of secondary messengers in cell signaling with our latest research on Diacylglycerol (DAG) lipids and their role in cellular communication. DAG kinases (DGK) control cellular DAG levels through phosphorylation, making them crucial in understanding cell signaling pathways. While small molecule inhibitors targeting DGK proteins are valuable tools for investigating DAG signaling, their development has been challenging due to limited information on binding pockets within cells.
Our ground-breaking approach combines chemical proteomics and AlphaFold technology to predict previously undiscovered binding regions for the development of covalent inhibitors.
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. Please note that the article processing charges are waived until mid-2022, so the journal is currently free to publish in.
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
Royal Society of Chemistry
The team at RSC Chemical Biology are delighted to invite you to our upcoming webinar to celebrate the winner of our Outstanding Paper Award from 2022. The winner is Professor Craig Crews, of Yale University, for their paper “OligoTRAFTACs: A generalizable method for transcription factor degradation”.
The webinar, scheduled to last for one hour, will feature a presentation from the group of Professor Craig Crews discussing their work, and this will be followed by a presentation from Professor Michelle Arkin, an Editorial Board Member for RSC Chemical Biology, highlighting some ongoing work in her group at the University of California, San Francisco.
This event is being held online through Zoom and is completely free to attend. It will be held on Tuesday 21st November at 17:00 GMT. You can find more information on our Event Page and can register for the event here.
We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!
G-quadruplexes (or G4s) are four-stranded DNA and RNA structures that fold from guanine (G)-rich sequences. G4 are suspected to play key biological roles in human cells and diseases. Small molecules that selectively target G4s (or G4-ligands) can thus be used as modulators to gain insights into the cell circuitry where G4s are involved. While hundreds of G4-ligands have been designed, synthesized and used, most if not all of them are flat aromatic molecules prone to interact with the duplex-DNA (the major form of DNA within the nucleus), which mechanically decreases their specificity for G4s.
We have developed a brand new molecular design, following a biomimetic approach that hinges on the observation that G4s are stable secondary structures owing to the ability of Gs to self-associate to form G-quartets, and then of G-quartets to self-stack to form the columnar core of G4s. Therefore, using a synthetic G-quartet as a G4-ligand represents a unique example of biomimetic recognition of G4s, relying on a like-likes-like approach, which is the surest pledge for a very high G4-selectivity.
In this article, we report on the design, synthesis and use of synthetic G-quartet-based ligands, also referred to as TASQs (for template-assembled synthetic G-quartets). These TASQs are the latest prototypes of TASQs, being multivalent TASQs (that is why we refer to them as MultiTASQs) able to be functionalized in situ by click chemistry (both CuAAC and SPAAC) for optical imaging and affinity precipitation purposes. These bioorthogonal investigations thus provides unique information about G4 biology.
Click on the infographic to read the full paper!
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. Please note that the article processing charges are waived until mid-2022, so the journal is currently free to publish in.
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
Royal Society of Chemistry
We’re pleased to share that Professor Christopher J. Chang, Advisory Board member for RSC Chemical Biology, is the recipient of the 2024 Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry. Congratulations Chris! You can read more about Chris’ award, and Professor Michelle Chang’s, in UC Berkeley’s announcement; and find out about all of the 2024 ACS National Award winners at their web page,
We’re pleased to announce that a new themed collection from RSC Chemical Biology on Chemical Proteomics has now been published online.
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.
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
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
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.
The paper explores developing a chemical tool to label formyl peptide receptor 1 (FPR1) in cells. FPR1 is a sensor in the human innate immune system, which is our body’s ancient first-line response system to detect pathogens. FPR1 is found in our immune cells; it helps these cells move towards sites of infection by sensing peptides released from bacteria.
However, the role of FPR1 is not so simple. FPR1 has been reported in other cells, such as those lining our mucous membranes (gut, lungs etc.), where it presumably comes into contact with many of our friendly bacteria without causing widespread immune activation. This family of proteins (FPRs1-3) can recognise very different molecules, and how this occurs is only beginning to be explored. FPRs can also cause and suppress inflammation and have been linked to numerous diseases (cancer, autoimmune disease). However, it’s unclear how this occurs and how we might modulate it to treat diseases.
In this paper, we designed a tool to label or tag FPR1 with a dye so we can see this sensor on the surface of cells. Our tool also allows us to detect inhibitors that bind FPR1. A key feature of it, is that it permanently labels FPR1. We expect it will be useful to understand the fundamentals of FPR1 biology and explore how we can treat diseases through molecules that activate or repress this protein.
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. Please note that the article processing charges are waived until mid-2022, so the journal is currently free to publish in.
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
Royal Society of Chemistry
