ACS Meeting News: Lipids may not be arranged the way scientists thought, imaging mass spec data suggest

Though they’re the most obvious part of cells, cell membranes have been a frustrating puzzle for scientists. Despite years of gathering information on the lipid and protein composition of membranes, biologists and chemists still haven’t fully established how the components are organized. That’s partly because the membranes are fluid, so the structure is constantly changing in subtle ways. One thing scientists agree on is that some level of localized organization must be taking place.

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Photos from the 245th ACS national meeting, which was held in New Orleans on April 7–11.

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Potential treatments for cancer, respiratory disease, heart trouble unveiled at ACS meeting

Take a conference center ballroom, a crowd of chemists, and drug structures emerging from the shroud of secrecy, and you have the recipe for one of the most consistently popular sessions at the ACS national meeting.

At the spring meeting in New Orleans, the Division of Medicinal Chemistry’s traditional “First-Time Disclosures” session revealed five drug candidate structures, each from a different company. The molecules face a tough road ahead in clinical trials, but they have at least a chance of becoming medications in the future.

- BMS-906024, Notch Signaling Inhibitor

- LGX818, Made To Fight Melanoma

- AZD5423, For Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

- Birinapant, Apoptosis Inhibitor

- MGL-3196, Thyroid Hormone Analog

ACS Meeting News: Birthday gathering celebrates the past and future of the industrial reaction to convert olefins to aldehydes

Everybody likes a birthday celebration. Not always the part about growing older, but the part about getting better.

The hydroformylation reaction is a good example of improvement with age. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the discovery of this important industrial catalytic process for producing aldehydes. The aldehydes serve as chemical intermediates for making products as varied as detergents, paints, and even automobile windshields. Rather than retiring the process and putting it out to pasture, chemical companies are keeping hydroformylation busy at work, and finding new applications to boot—a little extra icing on the cake.

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Strolling around the French Quarter on my last day attending the spring ACS national meeting in New Orleans, I stumbled across the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, a 19th-century apothecary shop filled from floor to ceiling with bottles and jars containing crude drugs, herbal medicines, and even voodoo potions. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to visit this gem of a place, check out this virtual tour I put together–and be sure to visit the next time ACS visits New Orleans in spring 2018!

ACS Meeting News: Relative rates of surface deposition and diffusion govern crystal morphology

Nanocrystals come in a wide variety of shapes that can affect applications. In some cases, the distribution of products generated by catalytic nanoparticles depends on the particle shape. And the effectiveness of nanoparticle-based chemical sensors can also depend on crystal shape. But controlling these shapes as the tiny particles grow during synthesis remains challenging.

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ACS Meeting News: ‘Chemistry of Energy & Food’ was national meeting’s theme

With its storied culinary scene, New Orleans proved a fitting place for last week’s American Chemical Society national meeting, which spotlighted food and energy chemistry.

Four plenary lectures covered topics from food flavors to microalgal triglyceride oils as a new source of renewable oil for energy and food.

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ACS Meeting News: Catalytic process creates butanol as a better biofuel option for gasoline

Ethanol derived from corn and sugarcane has been a blessing when it comes to transportation fuels. The millions of gallons of ethanol added to gasoline in the U.S. each year help oxygenate the fuel to limit pollution and stretch petroleum supplies. One drawback is that ethanol reduces the energy content of gasoline, resulting in fewer miles per gallon when you are on the road. Read Full Story

Over on CENtral Science’s The Haystack, Carmen Drahl liveblogged the public debut of five drug candidates’ structures, complete with hand-drawn goodness.

ACS Meeting News: Running common reactions in aqueous micelle solutions makes them significantly greener

When Bruce H. Lipshutz said he had a goal to help the synthetic organic chemistry community get organic solvents out of organic reactions, he wasn’t kidding. The University of California, Santa Barbara, chemistry professor had been quizzing process chemists in industry about the most common reactions they use and what they would like to do to improve the cost and environmental profiles of the processes—that is, how to make them greener and more sustainable. One of the biggest obstacles, they said, was organic solvents.

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