Photocontrolled Release of the Anticancer Drug Chlorambucil with Caged Harmonic Nanoparticles

While chemotherapy is one of the most used treatments in oncology, the systemic administration of chemotherapeutics generally results in undesired damages to healthy tissues and cells, side effects such as severe nausea and leukopenia, and reduced efficacy due to multidrug resistance and poor target accessibility. The limitations of conventional chemotherapy formulation have prompted the development of alternative nanomaterials-based strategies to achieve targeted and stimuli sensitive payload delivery to reach optimal local drug concentration at tumor sites. In this study, the anticancer drug chlorambucil (Clb) was conjugated to the surface of silica coated lithium niobate (LNO) harmonic nanoparticles (HNPs) using a photocaging tether based on coumarin-4-yl methyl derivative. Upon laser pulsed femtosecond irradiation at 790 nm, the second harmonic emission from the metal oxide core induced the efficient release of Clb, with concomitant contribution from the nonlinear absorption of the coumarin (CM)-based moiety.     

Probing the Brønsted Acidity of the External Surface of Faujasite-Type Zeolites

We outline two methodologies to selectively characterize the Brønsted acidity of the external surface of FAU-type zeolites by IR and NMR spectroscopy of adsorbed basic probe molecules. The challenge and goal are to develop reliable and quantitative IR and NMR methodologies to investigate the accessibility of acidic sites in the large pore FAU-type zeolite Y and its mesoporous derivatives often referred to as ultra-stable Y (USY). The accessibility of their Brønsted acid sites to probe molecules (n-alkylamines, n-alkylpyridines, n-alkylphosphine- and phenylphosphine-oxides) of different molecular sizes is quantitatively monitored either by IR or ³¹P NMR spectroscopy. It is now possible, for the first time to quantitatively discriminate between the Brønsted acidity located in the microporosity and on the external surface of large pore zeolites. For instance, the number of external acid sites on a Y (LZY-64) zeolite represents 2 % of its total acid sites while that of a USY (CBV760) represents 4 % while the latter has a much lower framework Si/Al ratio.     

Efficient synthesis of phosphorus-containing dendrimers capped with isosteric functions of amino-bismethylene phosphonic acids

An efficient synthetic strategy to synthesize phosphorus-containing dendrimers capped with isosteric acid functions derived from tyramine is described. The method is demonstrated on a first generation dendrimer that can be easily capped with 12 amino(bismethylene) sulfonic acids and amino(bismethylene) carboxylic acids that are strict analogs of the corresponding amino(bismethylene) phosphonic acids.     

Weighted irregular Gabor tight frames and dual systems using windows in the Schwartz class

We give a characterization for the weighted irregular Gabor tight frames or dual systems in L²(Rn) in terms of the distributional symplectic Fourier transform of a positive Borel measure on R2n naturally associated with the system and the short-time Fourier transform of the windows in the case where the window (or at least one of the windows in the case of dual systems) belongs to S(Rn). This result implies that, for certain classes of windows such as generalized Gaussians or “extreme-value” windows, the only weighted irregular Gabor tight frames (or even dual systems with both windows in the same class) that can be constructed with these windows are the trivial ones, corresponding to the measure μ=1 on R2n. Furthermore, we show that, if a such Gabor system admits a dual which is of Gabor type, then the Beurling density of the associated measure exists and is equal to one.     

Multiplurifunctionalized Phosphorus Dendrimers: Selective Functionalization of P(X)CL2 Terminal Groups

Abstract

Dendrimers are hyperbranched macromolecules constituted of repetitive branched units. They are synthesized step-by-step, a method which ensures a perfectly defined structure. This mini-review reports examples of rare “multiplurifunctionalized” dendrimers that have several types of functional groups precisely located on each terminal branching point. They are obtained thanks to the specificity of the reactivity of each Cl of P(X)Cl₂ (X = generally S, but also O) terminal groups on the surface of poly(phosphorhydrazone) dendrimers.     

Improvements for ground-based remote sensing of atmospheric aerosol properties by additional polarimetric measurements

We discuss the improvements in the aerosol properties characterization resulting from the additional multi-wavelength polarization measurements measured by a new CIMEL polarized sun/sky-photometer, CE318-DP. In order to process direct-sun, sky and polarization measurements in a wide spectral range (340–1640 nm), we developed new calibration methods and strategies, e.g. using the Langley plot method to calibrate both direct-sun irradiance and sky radiance, as well as combining laboratory facilities with a vicarious method to calibrate the polarized sky measurements. For studying the impact of new polarimetric measurements on the retrievals of aerosol properties, we have processed an extensive record of field measurements using an updated Dubovik and King retrieval algorithm [Dubovik O, Sinyuk A, Lapyonok T, Holben BN, Mishchenko MI, et al. Application of spheroid models to account for aerosol particle nonsphericity in remote sensing of desert dust. J Geophys Res 2006;111:D11208.]. A preliminary analysis shows that adding polarization in the inversion can reduce possible errors (notably for about 30% of our field cases) in the fine mode size distribution, real part of refractive index and particle shape parameter retrievals, especially for small particles.