Promising candidates: The development of bryostatins, a class of naturally occurring macrocyclic lactones, which might find application in the treatment of, for example, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer is summarized, focusing on recent work on their total synthesis and biomedical applications.

Chemistry for drug discovery: All pharmaceutical products contain organic molecules, which may be sourced from natural products or be fully synthetic molecules. Thus, organic chemistry underpins both existing and upcoming pharmaceutical products. An appraisal of the relationship between synthetic chemistry and early drug discovery is given, along with a discussion on key concepts such as diversity-, biology-, and lead-oriented syntheses (see figure).

Lanthanum revealed: The radiochemistry and first targeted in vivo application for the theranostic lanthanum radioisotope pair La-132/135 is demonstrated.

Made of nanostars: By the assistance of ultrasound, the violent polyol process for silver particle generation becomes controllable, enabling the self-assembly of nanostars to nanodimers. Moreover, the aggregation of nanodimers can be easily tuned by post-ultrasonic treatment, which gives a sensitive substrate for SERS.

Enhancement of the utility of alkanoylsilanes: Generation of siloxycarbenes from alkanoylsilanes by triplet energy transfer was examined by using an Ir complex and was successfully applied to C−C coupling reactions with boronates or aldehydes. This methodology efficiently suppressed undesired Norrish-type fragmentation reactions and broaden synthetic utility of alkanoylsilanes.

Cyclopropenylation: An efficient method to produce trifluoromethyl cyclopropenes and interesting oligo-cyclopropenes is reported (see scheme).

Make it active! Tellurium-based dicationic chalcogen bonding organocatalysts have been used to activate a carbonyl compound in the Michael addition reaction between indole derivatives and trans-crotonophenone. Up to 1000-fold rate accelerations were observed compared to the corresponding iodinated halogen bond donor. Several comparison experiments were performed to rule out other modes of activation than chalcogen bonding.

Light on interaction: Photoresponsive molecular switches embedded within metal–organic frameworks enable the modification of both the adsorption sites and the orientation of guest molecules. Atomistic simulations predict the high potential of these photoresponsive materials to change intermolecular interactions (see figure).

Six-membered cyclic frustrated phosphane/borane Lewis pair adds carbon dioxide under mild conditions. Crystallization gave the unique macrocyclic tetramer with bridging CO₂ between the individual cyclo-FLP units (see scheme).

A new family of iodinated ytterbium(III)-gallium(III) metallacrowns with tunable X-Ray attenuation and near-infrared luminescence has been created.

Best combination! A supramolecular coordination assembly composed of Fe^II ladders and partially charged TCNQ radicals undergoes thermally induced simultaneous switching of magnetism and electrical conduction (SCO=spin crossover, TCNQ=7,7′,8,8′-tetracyano-p-quinodimethane). This material also exhibits a magnetoresistance effect.

Orthogonal redox labelling of nucleobases with substituted ferrocenes with tuned redox potential was developed for redox coding of DNA bases.

Control over host concentration: A colored DNP/Blue Box synthetic PNIPAm-co-PAA polymeric system featuring both thermo- and pH responsiveness allows the host concentration in aqueous media to be tuned in an orchestrated manner by controlling the partial collapse of the dual stimuli-responsive copolymer. This supramolecular polymeric system thus shows great potential for application in both T and pH chromic materials and for the development of more complex systems with molecular communication.

Iron doping into CoP favors the formation of a flower-like microstructure on a carbon membrane (CM). Fe-doped CoP/CM as an integrated electrode provides more active sites and fast electron and ion transport channels for sodium storage. The Fe-doped CoP flower-like microstructure on the CM exhibits an electrochemical performance for sodium ion batteries superior to that of pure CoP/CM.

Selenized and phosphorized cobalt-nickel oxide microcubes formed by a novel strategy using a sacrificial ZnO spherical template are employed as an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst. The selenized samples manifest desirable and robust OER performance, with comparable overpotential at 10 mA cm⁻² (312 mV) as RuO₂ (308 mV) and better activity when the current reaches 13.7 mA cm⁻².

Outcomes of ligand design: A series of platinum-based donor–acceptor complexes is presented. The effect of the donor ligands on the frontier orbitals, redox potentials, redox-induced isomerism, and photocatalysis is probe.

Sulfoxide synthases: Bacterial and fungal iron-dependent sulfoxide synthases are distinguished by their different abilities to catalyze oxidative carbon–selenium bond formation.

A rare species: In this work, the redox active ligand 1,2-bis(2,5-dimethylthiophen-3-yl)ethane-1,2-dione is described. Chelation of a vanadium metal center gives rise to an en-diolate motif in two five-membered V^IV metallacycles with hexatriene DTE backbones bearing axial chirality. Two non-oxido V^IV atropisomeric complexes with metalloradical character were isolated. Their dynamic behavior (reversible cyclization) in solution was studied in a CW EPR spectroscopic study.

Enhanced deracemization: Crystallization-enhanced rapid and complete deracemization of a chiral isoindolinone was achieved by fast microwave-assisted temperature cycling. The crucial role of stereoselective secondary nucleation in this process was elucidated in a targeted parametric study, which showed that optimization of this phenomenon leads to maximization of the deracemization rate (see figure).

Highest and fastest Pb removal: TMU-56, exhibits high performance in removal of toxic Pb^II metal ions from aqueous solutions. The existence of abundant strong chelating sites, along with large enough pore size, lead not only to the highest uptake capacity for Pb^II ions of 1130 mg g⁻¹, but also the fastest removal rate that has ever been reported for functionalized metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), which occurred in just 20 s (see figure).

One amine–3 tasks: Gamma-aminobutyric acid derivatives could easily be synthesized by the visible-light photoredox-catalyzed coupling of imines with olefins. The reaction works well for a range of substrates and tolerates many functional groups. A continuous-flow strategy considerably improved the efficiency of this methodology.

A novel class of 2′-deoxy-2′-fluoro-3′-C-hydroxymethyl-β-d-lyxo-configured nucleotides has been synthesized and incorporated into antisense oligonucleotides for the first time. Experiments on exonuclease degradation showed improved nucleolytic stability relative to the unmodified control.

The design and synthesis of CB₂R-selective cannabinoids along with their in vitro pharmacological characterization (binding and functional studies) is reported. Chimeric ligands emerge as potent CB₂R agonists with high selectivity over the closely related cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB₁R).

Keggin: A series of atomically precise lanthanide-iron-oxo nanoclusters featuring magnetite structure were obtained by introducing lanthanide ions as stabilizers and trans-4-Hydroxyl-l-proline (Hyp) and triethanolamine (TEOA-H₃) as protecting ligands to control the hydrolysis of iron ions.

A stabilizing effect: Clear trends can be found in the seemingly chaotic distribution of dimerization constants of hierarchically assembled helicates in DMSO, revealing the stabilizing effect of solvent-supported London dispersion effects.

Coming together: A highly efficient intramolecular inverse-electron-demand aza-Diels–Alder (IEDADA) reaction catalyzed by a chiral phosphoric acid has been developed (see figure). Various angular fused heterocycles were obtained in high yields with excellent diastereo- and enantioselectivities. DFT calculations provide a better insight into the mechanistic features of the chiral Brønsted acid catalyzed aza-Diels–Alder reaction.

Charge transfer (CT) complexes, formed by noncovalent bonding between electron-rich and -deficient molecules, have attracted much attention for a variety of applications. It was shown that anion coordination can provide an alternative strategy to promote the formation of π stacks with CT interactions between tris(urea) ligands and viologen cations, through infinite ⋅⋅⋅DADA⋅⋅⋅ or finite DAD π-stacking interactions.

Imidazole-based dyes: The chromophoric 12 π-electron system in BODIPY fluorescent dyes is modified to give a 14 π-electron core. The novel BODIIM fluorescent dye shows surprising properties, which are complementary to BODIPY dyes.

The first chiral NHC macrocycle and its associated complexes are reported. The macrocyclic ligand supports both diazoalkane and alkylidene complexes on iron.