Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules derived from molecular oxygen that play critical roles in cellular signaling, homeostasis, and the regulation of various physiological and pathological processes. Accurate detection and quantification of ROS are essential for elucidating their roles in health and disease. Despite significant advances in ROS probe development, challenges persist due to their short lifetimes, high reactivity, and their chemical diversity. This perspective article provides a critical evaluation of the limitations of the most commonly applied probe molecule DCFH-DA. Capitalizing on this, recommendations with practical applications in the lab for the specific detection of hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radical, singlet oxygen, superoxide anion, and peroxynitrite are provided. By integrating current knowledge on ROS probe technologies, this work aims to guide researchers in reliably assessing ROS in complex biological systems, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding of ROS-mediated processes and their implications for disease research and therapeutic development.

Chemistry in charge of biology! Simple low-molecular-weight gelators, with minor modifications in molecular structure, self-assemble differently and can also co-assemble when simultaneously triggered...

Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) are bifunctional molecules designed to induce the degradation of specific proteins within a cell. While most PROTACs are noncovalent interactors, covalent PROT...

Researchers have used a cutting-edge robotic system capable of synthesising hundreds of metal complexes to develop a possible antibiotic candidate - offering fresh hope in the global fight against dru...

Made using low-cost reagents, the gels could be more sustainable than current anti-icing products

npj Antimicrobials and Resistance - Predicting drug inactivation by changes in bacterial growth dynamics

Methods for the systematic synthesis and evaluation of large numbers of transition metal complexes at a time are still limited. Here, the authors report a high-throughput method to create and test hun...

With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

New research resolves how the critical tuberculosis drug bedaquiline disrupts bioenergetics to attack the pathogen by using a powerful spectroscopic technique

We present Tolcapone and derivatives as a new class of potent glycomimetics for lectin inhibition. Over 3200 Roche in-house compounds were screened experimentally and a subset was biophysically evalu...

We report “Sirtuin Trapping Ligands” (SirTraps), mechanism-based 1,2,3-triazole inhibitors that hijack sirtuin (SIRT) catalysis to form covalent triazolium– or triazole–ADP-ribose (ADPR) adducts from...

Covalent inhibitors are powerful entities in drug discovery. Now the amino acid selectivity and reactivity of a diverse electrophile library have been assessed proteome-wide using an unbiased workflow...

Metal-based Photoimmunotherapy Agents for the Targeted Treatment of Neuroblastoma Primary supervisor: Adam Sedgwick, King's College London Secondary supervisor: Jeannine Hess, The Francis Crick Ins...

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Metal complexes offer unique opportunities as scaffolds in chemical biology and drug discovery, with tuneable geometry, modular coordination environments, and structural features not readily accessibl...

Here we report a C3-symmetric metal-binding tripeptide, BTMA-1, that self-assembles in water into either a chiral supramolecular helical polymer or a discrete CoII peptide helicate, depending on metal coordination. The CoII peptide helicate exhibits high affinity and selectivity toward DNA three-way junctions (3WJ), a class of noncanonical DNA structures with emerging biological relevance. Importantly, we demonstrate that the recognition process can be triggered dynamically by adding CoII ions to a dispersion of the supramolecular polymer, which acts as an inert precursor reservoir in physiological media. In this way, our strategy shows that chiral supramolecular helical polymers can form temporarily inactive aggregates that release discrete helicates for biomolecular recognition, such as 3WJ binding, upon metal ion coordination. Overall, this mechanism reveals a previously unexplored capability of this class of materials and offers a new approach for the design of responsive supramolecular systems for nucleic acid recognition and anticancer therapy.

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Supramolecular gels based on 1,3:2,4-dibenzylidenesorbitol (DBS) with modifications in the para positions of the aromatic rings form effective thickeners for mixtures of monopropylene glycol (MPG) and...