Speaker
Description
Chiral enantiomers have identical chemical formula, molecular weight and physicochemical properties except for optical rotation, whereas they exhibit different biological and pharmacological properties. Many biologically active substances, such as amino acids, proteins, enzymes, DNA, etc., are chiral. While only one enantiomer of a chiral drug, usually the L–form, exhibits useful therapeutic effects, the D–form may generate adverse reaction to living organisms [1]. Therefore, it is crucial to develop simple, effective and generic analytical methods for chiral separation and screening of pharmaceutical intermediates and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In this line, the combination of micromachines with chirality might offer an innovative pathway to enhance the detection and discrimination of enantiobiorecognition events ad hoc by taking advantage of their inherent motion activity.
Herein, a novel multifunctional micromachine is presented to elucidate the concept of ‘enantiorecognition-on-the-fly’. The multifunctional micromachine architecture simultaneously exhibits i) chiral, ii) magnetic, and iii) fluorescent properties in combination with iv) self-propulsion [2]. Using Surface Engineering, the enantiobiorecognition features were robustly integrated by anchoring a chiral supramolecular host moiety as β-cyclodextrin (β-CD), which successfully demonstrated its suitability to accommodate chiral biomolecules (i.e., amino acids) with different binding kinetics via supramolecular host–guest encapsulation. Our findings demonstrate that motion outperform static systems in terms of enantiodiscrmination ability.
References
[1] J. Muñoz, A. González-Campo, M. Riba, et al. “Chiral magnetic-nonobiofluids for rapid electrochemical screening of enantiomers at a magneto nanocomposie graphene-paste electrode”. Biosensors and Bioelectronics (2018), 105, 95-102.
[2] J. Muñoz, M. Urso, M. Pumera. “Self‐Propelled Multifunctional Microrobots Harboring Chiral Supramolecular Selectors for ‘Enantiorecognition‐on‐the‐Fly’”. Angewandte Chemie (2022), 61, e202116090.
