Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly become a global pandemic. Although great efforts have been made to develop effective therapeutic interventions, only the nucleotide analog remdesivir was approved for emergency use against COVID-19. Remdesivir targets the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), an essential enzyme for viral RNA replication and a promising drug target for COVID-19. Recently, several structures of RdRp in complex with substrate RNA and remdesivir were reported, providing insights into the mechanisms of RNA recognition by RdRp. These structures also reveal the mechanism of RdRp inhibition by nucleotide inhibitors and offer a molecular template for the development of RdRp-targeting drugs. This review discusses the recognition mechanism of RNA and nucleotide inhibitor by RdRp, and its implication in drug discovery.

Cas12a-based systems, which detect specific nucleic acids via collateral cleavage of reporter DNA, display huge potentials for rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases. Here, the Manganese-enhanced Cas12a (MeCas12a) system is described, where manganese is used to increase the detection sensitivity up to 13-fold, enabling the detection of target RNAs as low as five copies. MeCas12a is also highly specific, and is able to distinguish between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) differing by a single nucleotide. MeCas12a can detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in clinical samples and distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) RNA in simulated samples, thus offering an attractive alternative to other methods for the diagnosis of infectious diseases including COVID-19 and MERS.

The lack of efficient [ 18 F]fluorination processes and target-specific organofluorine chemotypes remains the major challenge of fluorine-18 positron emission tomography (PET). We report here an ultrafast isotopic exchange method for the radiosynthesis of novel PET agent aryl [ 18 F]fluorosulfate enabled by the emerging sulfur fluoride exchange (SuFEx) click chemistry. The method has been applied to the fully automated 18 Fradiolabeling of 25 structurally and functionally diverse aryl fluorosulfates with excellent radiochemical yield (83−100%, median 98%) and high molar activity (280 GBq μmol −1 ) at room temperature in 30 s. The purification of radiotracers requires no time-consuming HPLC but rather a simple cartridge filtration. We further demonstrate the imaging application of a rationally designed poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1)-targeting aryl [ 18 F]fluorosulfate by probing subcutaneous tumors in vivo.

Selenium (Se)-containing compounds have emerged as potential therapeutic agents for the treatment of a range of diseases. Through tremendous effort, considerable knowledge has been acquired to understand the complex chemical properties and biological activities of selenium, especially after its incorporation into bioactive molecules. From this perspective, we compiled extensive literature evidence to summarize and critically discuss the relationship between the pharmacological activities and chemical properties of selenium compounds and the strategic incorporation of selenium into organic molecules, especially bioactive heterocycles and natural products. We also provide perspectives regarding the challenges in selenium-based medicinal chemistry and future research directions.

are encoded by unique DNA sequences as identification "barcodes," and are assembled combinatorial using split-andpool strategy or alternative procedures via DNA-compatible reactions. [7][8][9] DELs comprising millions or even billions of DNA-tagged druglike molecules can be effectively synthesized via this technology and screened against various protein targets of interest in a single pooled assay. In a typical affinity-based selection experiment, when non-and low-affinity binders are washed away, the DNA tag of the remaining compounds can be amplified using polymerase chain reaction and the relative frequency of the remaining compounds before and after selection is determined by counting the number of DNA tags in high-throughput DNA sequencing experiments. [10,11] To date, a large number of high-quality hits have been identified by the DEL technology for various therapeutically relevant targets, such as kinases, [12] phosphatases, [13] and G-protein coupled receptors. [14] Several drug candidates derived from their corresponding DEL hits, such as soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor GSK2256294, and death domain receptor-associated adaptor kinase RIP1 inhibitor GSK2982772 have progressed to latestage clinical development, [15,16] further emphasizing DEL as a powerful technology for small molecular drug discovery.Despite these successes, the great potential of DEL technology in drug discovery has not yet been fully realized. One of the most fundamental challenges is the synthesis of high-quality libraries with more structural diversity, which in turn depends on the development of new and robust DNA-compatible reactions that allow more flexibility in DEL's design and synthesis. Among various DNA-compatible reactions developed in recent years, transition-metal-promoted reactions such as Suzuki-Miyaura coupling, [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Sonogashira coupling, and Buchwald-Hartwig amination using DNA-conjugated aryl halides as electrophiles have been elegantly developed (Figure 1), [24][25][26] and some of them have been developed for DEL synthesis. However, the environmental toxicity and high costs of aryl halides have hindered their large-scale applications in industry. Thus, much attention has been paid to phenol-derived electrophiles recently, [27] which, as compared to aryl halides, offer a more sustainable starting material because most of them are readily available from biomass. [28] In addition, phenol modules are also important components of natural products (NPs), bioactive molecules, and pharmaceutical drugs. Coupling reactions with Using (hetero)aryl fluorosulfonates as versatile electrophiles, facile on-DNA cross-coupling reactions of Suzuki, Sonogashira, and Buchwald are reported here. Notably, all of these reactions show excellent functional group tolerance, mild reaction conditions (relative low temperature and open to air), rich heterocyclic coupling partners, and more importantly, DNA-compatibility. Thus, these new reactions based on efficient formation of C(sp 2 )-C(sp 2 ), C(sp 2 )-C(sp), and C(s...

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Increased glycolysis in tumor cells is associated with increased risk of tumor progression and mortality. Therefore, disruption of glycolysis, one of the main sources of cellular energy supply, can serve as a target for suppressing tumor growth and progression. Of note, hexokinase-2 (HK2) plays vital roles in glucose metabolism. Moreover, the expression of HK2 alters the metabolic phenotype and supports the continuous growth of tumor cells, making it an attractive target for cancer therapy. Quercetin (QUE), a bioactive flavonoid, has a profound anti-tumor effect on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the precise underlying mechanism of this effect is unclear. In the present study, we reported that QUE inhibited the proliferation of HCC cells that relied on aerobic glycolysis. We further found that QUE could decrease the protein levels of HK2 and suppress the AKT/mTOR pathway in HCC cells. In addition, QUE significantly restrained the growth of HCC xenografts and decreased HK-2 expression in vivo. Taken together, we have revealed that QUE suppresses the progression of HCC by inhibiting HK2-dependentglycolysis, which may have a promising potential to be an effective treatments for HCC, especially for those patients with high HK2 expression.

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