Except remdesivir, no specific antivirals for SARS-CoV-2 infection are currently available. Here, we characterize two small-molecule-compounds, named GRL-1720 and 5h, containing an indoline and indole moiety, respectively, which target the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro). We use VeroE6 cell-based assays with RNA-qPCR, cytopathic assays, and immunocytochemistry and show both compounds to block the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 with EC50 values of 15 ± 4 and 4.2 ± 0.7 μM for GRL-1720 and 5h, respectively. Remdesivir permitted viral breakthrough at high concentrations; however, compound 5h completely blocks SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro without viral breakthrough or detectable cytotoxicity. Combination of 5h and remdesivir exhibits synergism against SARS-CoV-2. Additional X-ray structural analysis show that 5h forms a covalent bond with Mpro and makes polar interactions with multiple active site amino acid residues. The present data suggest that 5h might serve as a lead Mpro inhibitor for the development of therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Hypoxia in solid tumors is thought to be an important factor in resistance to therapy, but the extreme microscopic heterogeneity of the partial pressures of oxygen (pO 2) between the capillaries makes it difficult to characterize the scope of this phenomenon without invasive sampling of oxygen distributions throughout the tissue. Here we develop a noninvasive method to track spatial oxygen distributions in tumors during fractionated radiotherapy, using oxygen-dependent quenching of phosphorescence, oxygen probe Oxyphor PtG4 and the radiotherapy-induced Cherenkov light to excite and image the phosphorescence lifetimes within the tissue. Mice bearing MDA-MB-231 breast cancer and FaDu head neck cancer xenografts show different pO 2 responses during each of the 5 fractions (5 Gy per fraction), delivered from a clinical linear accelerator. This study demonstrates subsurface in vivo mapping of tumor pO 2 distributions with submillimeter spatial resolution, thus providing a methodology to track response of tumors to fractionated radiotherapy.
Expanding the anti-Stokes shift for triplet−triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) systems with high quantum yields without compromising power density thresholds (I th ) remains a critical challenge in photonics. Our studies reveal that such expansion is possible by using a highly endothermic TTA-UC pair with an enthalpy difference of +80 meV even in a polymer matrix 1000 times more viscous than toluene. Carrying out efficient endothermic triplet−triplet energy transfer (TET) requires suppression of the reverse annihilator-to-sensitizer TET, which was achieved by using sensitizers with high molar extinction coefficients and long triplet state lifetimes as well as optimized annihilator concentrations. Under these conditions, the sensitizer-toannihilator forward TET becomes effectively entropy driven, yielding upconversion quantum yields comparable to those achieved with the exothermic TTA-UC pair but with larger anti-Stokes shifts and even lower I th , a previously unattained achievement.
Ruthenium-catalyzed oxidative annulation of N-quinolin-8-yl-benzamides with alkynes in open air has been achieved using 8-aminoquinolinyl moiety as a bidentate directing group in the presence of Cu(OAc)2·H2O as an oxidant. This reaction offers a broad substrate scope, and both symmetrical and unsymmetrical alkynes can be applied. High regioselectivity was achieved in the case of unsymmetrical (aryl)alkynes. Reaction with heteroaryl amides was also successful in this catalytic process. A ruthenium-N-quinolin-8-yl-benzamide complex was isolated in the absence of alkyne; in the absence of both N-quinolin-8-yl-benzamide and alkyne, in contrast to literature, only the monoacetate complex RuCl(OAc)(p-cymene), but not the bis-acetate complex Ru(OAc)2(p-cymene), was isolated. These data suggest that this reaction may proceed via N,N-bidentate chelate complex. Key products were characterized by X-ray crystallography.
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