Determination of nitrazepam in serum by gas-liquid chromatography. Application in bioavailability studies.

A gas chromatographic method with electron capture detection has been developed for the analysis of nitrazepam in serum. N-Desmethyldiazepam is used as internal standard. Nitrazepam isolated from serum is converted by acid hydrolysis into 2-amino 5 nitrobenzophenone, which is chromatographed. Metabolites of nitrazepam (7-amino and 7-acetamido compounds) are not included in the determination. Recovery experiments showed that the method is quantitative. The limit of detection is 5 ng/ml of nitrazepam in serum. The method has been used for measuring serum concentrations of nitrazepam in bioavailability studies on subjects given a single dose of nitrazepam tablets.     

Targeting cell surface receptors with ligand-conjugated nanocrystals

To explore the potential for use of ligand-conjugated nanocrystals to target cell surface receptors, ion channels, and transporters, we explored the ability of serotonin-labeled CdSe nanocrystals (SNACs) to interact with antidepressant-sensitive, human and Drosophila serotonin transporters (hSERT, dSERT) expressed in HeLa and HEK-293 cells. Unlike unconjugated nanocrystals, SNACs were found to dose-dependently inhibit transport of radiolabeled serotonin by hSERT and dSERT, with an estimated half-maximal activity (EC(50)) of 33 (dSERT) and 99 microM (hSERT). When serotonin was conjugated to the nanocrystal through a linker arm (LSNACs), the EC(50) for hSERT was determined to be 115 microM. Electrophysiology measurements indicated that LSNACs did not elicit currents from the serotonin-3 (5HT(3)) receptor but did produce currents when exposed to the transporter, which are similar to those elicited by antagonists. Moreover, fluorescent LSNACs were found to label SERT-transfected cells but did not label either nontransfected cells or transfected cells coincubated with the high-affinity SERT antagonist paroxetine. These findings support further consideration of ligand-conjugated nanocrystals as versatile probes of membrane proteins in living cells.     

Squeezing the [Cu-OH...H2O-Cu]3+ bridge by cryptate encapsulation

Treatment of cryptand L(1) with Cu(II) generates a H3O2(-)-bridged dicopper(II) cryptate, 2, where the guest anion has responded to steric constraint by a significant shortening of the O-O distance to 2.325(9) A; computational optimization at the B3LYP/6-31(d) level suggests that the bridging O-H...O H-bond is bent (approximately 157 degrees) but that the barrier to interchange of the bridging H atom is low (<4 kJ mol(-1)). This cryptate, rather than the [Cu2L(1)muCN]3+ species recently claimed to derive from cleavage of the C-C bond of the solvent, is the product of acetonitrile recrystallization of the initially formed reaction product, 1.     

Dual role of (-)-sparteine in the palladium-catalyzed aerobic oxidative kinetic resolution of secondary alcohols

The mechanistic details of the palladium-catalyzed aerobic oxidative kinetic resolution of secondary alcohols have been elucidated. (-)-Sparteine was found to have a dual role as a chiral ligand and an exogenous base. Saturation kinetics were observed for the dependence on (-)-sparteine concentration. A first-order dependence on [alcohol] and [catalyst] as well as inhibition by addition of (-)-sparteine HCl were observed. These results are consistent with rate-limiting deprotonation under low (-)-sparteine concentrations and rate-limiting beta-hydride elimination using saturating (-)-sparteine concentrations. This conclusion is further supported by a kinetic isotope effect of 1.31 +/- 0.04 under saturation. The enantioselectivity events are also controlled by addition of (-)-sparteine in which high concentrations afford a more selective kinetic resolution.     

Evaluating and clustering retrosynthesis pathways with learned strategy

With recent advances in the computer-aided synthesis planning (CASP) powered by data science and machine learning, modern CASP programs can rapidly identify thousands of potential pathways for a given target molecule. However, the lack of a holistic pathway evaluation mechanism makes it challenging to systematically prioritize strategic pathways except for using some simple heuristics. Herein, we introduce a data-driven approach to evaluate the relative strategic levels of retrosynthesis pathways using a dynamic tree-structured long short-term memory (tree-LSTM) model. We first curated a retrosynthesis pathway database, containing 238k patent-extracted pathways along with ∼55 M artificial pathways generated from an open-source CASP program, ASKCOS. The tree-LSTM model was trained to differentiate patent-extracted and artificial pathways with the same target molecule in order to learn the strategic relationship among single-step reactions within the patent-extracted pathways. The model achieved a top-1 ranking accuracy of 79.1% to recognize patent-extracted pathways. In addition, the trained tree-LSTM model learned to encode pathway-level information into a representative latent vector, which can facilitate clustering similar pathways to help illustrate strategically diverse pathways generated from CASP programs.

Tree-structured long short-term memory neural model learns to understand the retrosynthesis design strategies from patent-extracted retrosynthetic pathway data.     

The ligand, the metal and the 'Holey'-host: Synthesis, structural and magnetic characterisation of Co(II), Ni(II) and Mn(II) metal-organic frameworks incorporating 4,4'-dicarboxy-2,2'-bipyridine

We report herein the single crystal structures of four metal-organic framework complexes incorporating the 4,4'-dicarboxy-2,2'-bipyridine ligand, H(2)dcbp: alpha-[Co(dcbp)(H(2)O)(2)], 1; beta-[Co(dcbp)(H(2)O)(2)], 2, [Ni(dcbp)(H(2)O)(2)], and [[Mn(dcbp)].1/2DEF], 4 (DEF = diethylformamide). In each complex the ligand is deprotonated giving neutral species with 1:1 stoichiometry that form three-dimensional coordination polymers. Supramolecular isomerism (polymorphism) in 1 and 2 arises from the different ligand connectivity around the octahedral Co(II) centres. The two coordinated water molecules in 1 occupy cis positions, which are trans to the chelating bipyridine nitrogen atoms, leaving the carboxylate oxygen atoms in axial trans positions. In 2 all like donors occupy cis positions. Different modes of carboxylate coordination in 1 and 2 give dissimilar network topologies. A rare example of two interpenetrating 6(4)8(2)-b (quartz-like) chiral networks in 1 results from both dcbp carboxylate groups coordinating in a monodentate fashion to adjacent Co(II) centres, whereas in 2 only one carboxylate group bridges between adjacent Co(II) centres giving rise to a single chiral (10,3)-a net. In 1 and 2 the coordinated water molecules hydrogen bond to the non-coordinated carboxylate oxygen atoms. These interactions give rise to water-carboxylate double helices in , and support the coordination network in 2. Strikingly for a pair of dimorphs the crystal densities of 1 and 2 differ by ca. 0.3 g cm(-3)(1.654 vs. 1.940 g cm(-3), respectively). Compound 3 is isomorphous with 1 and likewise features two chiral interpenetrating nets of quartz topology. In 4, chelating bipyridine nitrogen atoms and four carboxylate oxygen atoms from a total of five adjacent dcbp ligands provide distorted octahedral geometry around Mn(II). The carboxylate groups bridge adjacent Mn(II) centres to produce bis-carboxylato chains which cross-link and generate a 3D network that is perforated with channels. The channels are occupied with disordered DEF molecules. The network topology in 4 is quite different to 1-3 and has a (4.6(2))(4(2).6)(4(3).6(6).8(6)) Schlafli notation. Magnetic susceptibility studies performed on 1, 2, [[Mn(dcbp)].1/2DMF] 5 (DMF = dimethylformamide) and [[Mn(dcbp)].2H(2)O] 6 reveal very weak antiferromagnetic coupling between the metal centres in each case.