Synthesis, structure and thermal stability of fully hydrophobic porphyrin-DNA conjugates

The DNAs modified with tetraphenyl porphyrin at the center of 13mer oligonucleotide were synthesized using phosphoramidite chemistry and automated DNA synthesis. When the porphyrin modified oligonucleotide was annealed with its complementary strand, they formed a standard B-form duplex. The porphyrin moiety intercalated in the duplex, and moderately lowered the thermal stability.     

Dual Chemical Modification of a Polytheonamide Mimic: Rational Design and Synthesis of Ion‐Channel‐Forming 48‐mer Peptides with Potent Cytotoxicity

Polytheonamide B ( 1 ) is a natural peptide that displays potent cytotoxicity against P388 mouse leukemia cells (IC₅₀=0.098 nm ). Linear 48‐mer 1 is known to form monovalent cation channels on binding to lipid bilayers. We previously developed a fully synthetic route to 1 , and then achieved the design and synthesis of a structurally simplified analogue of 1 , namely, dansylated polytheonamide mimic 2 . Although the synthetically more accessible 2 was found to emulate the channel function of 1 , its cytotoxicity was decreased 120‐fold. Herein, the chemical preparation and biological evaluation of seven analogues 3 – 9 of 2 are reported. Compounds 3 – 9 were modified at their N terminus and/or the side chain of residue 44 of 2 to alter their physicochemical properties. The total synthesis of 3 – 9 was accomplished in a unified fashion by a combination of solid‐phase and solution‐phase chemistry. Systematic evaluation of the hydrophobicities, single‐channel currents, ion‐exchange activities, and cytotoxicities of 3 – 9 revealed that their hydrophobicities are correlated with the total magnitude of ion exchange and determine their cytotoxic potency. Consequently, the most hydrophobic analogue 9 exhibited the lowest IC₅₀ value, which is comparable to that of 1 . Therefore, these results clarified that the bioactivity of the polytheonamide‐based peptides can be rationally controlled by changing their hydrophobicity at the N and C termini of the 48‐amino‐acid sequence.     

Solitons and Fractal Kerr Response

Optical solitary waves that propagate in a Kerr medium exhibiting a power-law nonlocal response are studied analytically. The first-principles stability analysis based on quantum field theory shows that within the whole range of the exponent (the fractal dimension) the solitary wave can be stabilized.     

Lognormal Modes of Dielectric Optical Waveguides

It is shown that, at a critical point where the effective refractive index of a mode coincides with the bulk index of a cladding region, optical waveguide modes exhibiting a lognormal feature are supportable for a hyperlongrange refractive-index profile. As a typical example of waveguides that support lognormal modes a parabolic-index core surrounded by a depressed-index cladding is presented.     

Algebraically Decaying Modes in Many Dimensions: Application of Fubini’s Identity to Guided-Wave Optics

We show analytically that application of an identity in conformal invariant field theories to multidimensional guided-wave optics predicts a generic family of modes with algebraic (power-law) tails in the evanescent field.     

Stability of Multidimensional Solitary Waves for Cubic-Quintic Nonlinearity

We show analytically that in the presence of cubic and quintic nonlinearities above a certain critical power, multidimensional optical solitary waves could propagate stably in bulk media. To investigate the stability an analytical expression for the solitary-wave fields with an arbitrary transverse dimension is derived through the combined use of Galerkin’s method and self-consistent-field approximation.     

Ultraviolet Solitons Generated bv Parametric Interactions

Through numerical experiments we show that the use ot spatial solitons in second-order parametric interactions could make possible the observation of solitons in the vicinity of the vacuum ultraviolet.     

Photodynamic diagnosis in respiratory tract malignancy using an excimer dye laser system

Equipment has been developed for the early-stage diagnosis and treatment of cancer using an excimer dye laser. The excimer laser beam is obtained by exciting XeCl. A 405 nm beam tuned by DPS dye is used for tumour localization and a 630 nm beam obtained with a rhodamine B dye is used for treatment. The equipment was applied clinically on the basis of extensive experimental research. Effectiveness for cancer localization was examined in 11 cases: four were early stage (three lung cancer and one vocal cord cancer), four were stage I, two were stage III and one was stage IV. All cases were squamous cell carcinoma except for one case of adenocarcinoma. Fluorescence was recognized in all lesions and the equipment was effective for localization.