Chemical Society Reviews Blog

We are delighted to announce that Jennifer Love (University of Calgary, Canada) has joined the Chem Soc Rev team as Chair of the journal. Find out more about Jennifer below.

Jennifer obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Allegheny College in 1994 and her PhD from Stanford University in 2000. After postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, she began her independent career at the University of British Columbia in 2003. She moved to the University of Calgary in 2019, where she is Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry. Her research interests span inorganic, organometallic and organic chemistry with a focus on mechanistic analysis, catalyst design, developing new homogeneous catalytic transformations, and synthesis.

“I’m delighted to join as Chair of the Board of CSR – it’s a fantastic journal that covers all areas of chemistry.”

Welcome to the team Jennifer.

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2020 Pioneering Investigator Lectureship for Chem Soc Rev.

All nominations must be received by Friday 29th November 2019.

Chem Soc Rev Pioneering Investigator Lectureship

• Recognises mid-career scientists who have firmly established themselves in their independent careers, continuously publish innovative work, and have pioneered several research areas.
• Eligible nominees should have completed their PhD between January 2004 and December 2011. Appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path.

Early career researchers may be nominated for the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship .

Lectureship details

• The recipient of the lectureship will be invited to present a lecture at three different locations over a 12-month period, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference.
• The recipient will receive a contribution of £1500 towards travel and accommodation costs for their lectures, as well as a certificate.
• The recipient will be asked to contribute a review article for the journal.

How to nominate

Self-nomination is not permitted. Nominators must send the following to the editorial team via chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org by Friday 29th November 2019.

• Recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee.
• A one-page CV for the nominee, including a summary of their education, dates of key career achievements, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications and patents, and other indicators of esteem, together with evidence of career independence.
• A copy of the candidate’s best publication to date (as judged by the nominator).
• Two supporting letters of recommendation from two independent referees. These should not be someone from the same institution or the candidate’s post doc or PhD supervisor.
• The nominator and independent referees should comment on the candidate’s presenting skills.

Incomplete nominations or those not adhering to the above requirements will not be considered, and nominees will not be contacted regarding any missing or incorrect documents.

Selection procedure

• The editorial team will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided.
• The recipient of the lectureship will be selected and endorsed by a selection panel composed of members of the ChemSocRev Editorial Board. The winner will be announced in the first half of 2020.

NB: Please note that members of the selection panel from the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board are not eligible to nominate, or provide references, for this lectureship.

For any queries, please contact the editorial team at chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org.

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2019 Pioneering Investigator Lectureship for Chem Soc Rev.

All nominations must be received by Friday 25th January 2019.

The Pioneering Investigator Lectureship replaces our previous Emerging Investigator Lectureship, and aims to recognise mid-career scientists who have firmly established themselves in their independent careers. Early career researchers can be nominated for the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

Chem Soc Rev Pioneering Investigator Lectureship

• Recognises mid-career scientists who have firmly established themselves in their independent careers, continuously publish innovative work, and have pioneered several research areas.

• Eligible nominees should have completed their PhD between 15^th September 2003 and 14^th September 2010.

Lectureship details

• The recipient of the lectureship will be invited to present a lecture at three different locations over a 12-month period, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference.

• The recipient will receive a contribution of £1500 towards travel and accommodation costs for their lectures, as well as a certificate.

• The recipient will be asked to contribute a review article for the journal.

How to nominate

Self-nomination is not permitted. Nominators must send the following to the editorial team via chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org by Friday 25th January 2019.

• Recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee.

• A one-page CV for the nominee, including a summary of their education, dates of key career achievements, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications and patents, and other indicators of esteem, together with evidence of career independence.

• A copy of the candidate’s best publication to date (as judged by the nominator).

• Two supporting letters of recommendation from two independent referees. These should not be someone from the same institution or the candidate’s post doc or PhD supervisor.

The nominator and independent referees should comment on the candidate’s presenting skills.

Incomplete nominations or those not adhering to the above requirements will not be considered, and nominees will not be contacted regarding any missing or incorrect documents.

Selection procedure

• The editorial team will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided.

• Shortlisted candidates will be asked to provide a brief supporting statement summarising their key achievements, highlighting the impact of their work and justifying why they deserve the specific lectureship for which they have been entered.

• The recipient of the lectureship will then be selected and endorsed by a selection panel composed of members of the ChemSocRev Editorial Board. The winner will be announced in the first half of 2018.

NB: Please note that members of the selection panel from the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board are not eligible to nominate, or provide references, for this lectureship.

For any queries, please contact the editorial team at chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org.

We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Chemical Society Reviews in 2017, as selected by the editorial team, for their significant contribution to the journal. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.

We would like to say a big thank you to those individuals listed here as well as to all of the reviewers that have supported the journal. Each Outstanding Reviewer will receive a certificate to give recognition for their significant contribution.

Professor Amina Antonacci, National Research Council (CNR), ORCID: 0000-0001-9751-4910
Professor Pingyun Feng, University of California, ORCID: 0000-0002-3245-3739
Professor Philip Gale, University of Sydney, ORCID: 0000-0003-1937-0725
Professor Hiroshi Kitagawa, Kyoto University, ORCID: 0000-0002-7906-8061
Professor Alexander James MindenMiller, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ORCID: 0000-0003-3684-577X
Professor Yukihiro Ozaki, Kwansei-Gakuin University, ORCID: 0000-0002-4479-4004
Professor Huisheng Peng, Fudan University, ORCID: 0000-0001-6022-1778
Professor Jonathan Reid, University of Bristol, ORCID: 0000-0001-9390-3951
Professor Bin Ren, Xiamen University, ORCID: 0000-0001-6955-3015
Professor Cheng Wang, Xiamen University, ORCID: 0000-0002-2142-2945

We would also like to thank the Chemical Society Reviews Board and the general chemical sciences community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.

If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, just email us with details of your research interests and an up-to-date CV or résumé.  You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre.

When the magician pulls the rabbit from the hat, or the coin from behind someone’s ear or even guesses the card that they were thinking of, we commonly think “How did they do that?” (Because we are scientists and magic is not real).

When developing drugs for disease, scientists often design the candidates to interact with a hypothesised pathway or function. These are tested initially on cells, with successful therapeutics escalated to animal testing and clinical trials. However, in a review paper published online in Chem Soc Rev, Andrew Pieper and colleagues from the University of Iowa and Southwestern UT suggest that this method may limit the potential of drug development, inadvertently closing off avenues of discovery due to the presumed understanding of the mode of disease, and also reflecting the bias of the investigators.

The authors took a different approach when developing a drug for neurodegenerative disease. They looked at which drugs would work and then asked “how did it do that?” Rather than use a biochemical or cell-based assay, an in vivo screen was employed to identify potential candidate drugs that increased the number or survival of certain cells in the brain. Of the 1000 small molecules that were tested, one candidate, P7C3, was shown to improve memory and learning in mice. This was also orally available, crossed the blood brain barrier and non-toxic. Subsequently, the authors used the drug as a scaffold to develop a number of derivatives for application as a neuroprotective agent in a number of diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.

This different approach has enabled the development of the drug to move forwards, whilst also being able to look back and investigate the mechanism of action. Perhaps, even more notably, this has also saved a significant amount of time in discovering a potential therapeutic for neurodegenerative diseases, which, with an aging population, are becoming increasingly common.

Click on the link below to download the full article for free*

Andrew A. Pieper, Steven L. McKnight and Joseph M. Ready

Chem Soc Rev Advanced Article

DOI: 10.1039/C3CS60448A

*Access is free through a registered RSC account for 4 weeks – click here to register