RSC Advances

Pal, Tiyas; Bhimaneni, Saipriyanka; Sharma, Abha; Flora, S. J. S.

doi: 10.1039/d0ra04942epmid: 35519785

A series of multi-target natural product-pyridoxine based derivatives were designed, synthesized, characterized and evaluated as anti-Alzheimer agents. In vitro testing revealed the multi-functional properties of compounds such as inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), antioxidant and metal chelation. Among the series, 5i derivative was found most potent AChE inhibitor, possess antioxidant potential and chelating metal ions. Further binding interaction of 5i with AChE was studied using molecular docking, showed interaction with both PAS and CAS site of AChE. In silico predictions were also performed to predict toxicity and ADME properties of the molecule 5i and found within drug likeness range. Therefore, 5i could be a promising multi-functional compound that can be used for further development of novel drug for Alzheimer disease.

Lemport, Pavel S.; Matveev, Petr I.; Yatsenko, Alexander V.; Evsiunina, Mariia V.; Petrov, Valentine S.; Tarasevich, Boris N.; Roznyatovsky, Vitaly A.; Dorovatovskii, Pavel V.; Khrustalev, Victor N.; Zhokhov, Sergey S.; Solov'ev, Vitaly P.; Aslanov, Leonid A.; Petrov, Vladimir G.; Kalmykov, Stepan N.; Nenajdenko, Valentine G.; Ustyniuk, Yuri A.

doi: 10.1039/d0ra05182apmid: 35519740

Development of efficient extractants for the separation of actinides and lanthanides in the technologies of nuclear fuel cycle is one of the most urgent and complex tasks in modern nuclear energetics. New family of 4,7-dichloro-1,10-phenanthroline-2,9-dicarboxylic acid diamides based on cyclic amines was synthesized and shown to exhibit high selectivity in the La/Am pair separation (SF (Am/La ≈ 10)) and in the Am/Eu pair separation (SF (Am/Eu ≈ 12)). It was shown that pyrrolidine derived diamide is more efficient extractant for americium, curium and lanthanides from highly acidic HNO3 solution than its non-cyclic N,N,N′,N′-tetraalkyl analogues. The structures of synthesized compounds were studied in details by IR, NMR spectroscopy, and single crystal X-ray diffraction. According to spectroscopy data, incorporation of aromatic rings to the amide fragment of ligand leads to complex dynamic behavior in solutions what is believed to strongly affect the extraction ability of synthesized ligands.

Parsafard, Nastaran; Asil, Ali Garmroodi; Mirzaei, Shohreh

doi: 10.1039/d0ra04313cpmid: 35519732

Novel Pt–Cr/Zr(x)-HMS catalysts with different molar ratios of Cr/Zr were synthesized. These catalysts were characterized by necessary techniques including XRD, XRF, NH3-TPD, FTIR, H2 chemisorption, nitrogen sorption and TGA. Moreover, generalization performances of an optimized in-house regularization network and an RSM were compared for the prediction of activity and selectivity versus various molar ratios, feed temperatures and time on stream. The results indicated that the incorporation of Cr promotes the catalyst activity, in which a high amount of 63% conversion was obtained at Cr/Zr = 30 and T = 200 °C. Increasing temperature has an adverse effect on i-C7 and mono plus multi-branch isomer selectivity nearly in all amounts of molar ratios. The best i-C7 selectivity (66%), MOB (29.6%) and MUB (32%) were observed at 200 °C and Cr/Zr = 30. Although both modeling methods exhibited outstanding performances, statistical analysis revealed that optimized RN has slightly better performances than RSM.

Li, Xiaohong; Xu, Zhaofang; Chen, Lu; Hong, Liu; Li, Yang

doi: 10.1039/d0ra04888gpmid: 35519766

Polycarbosilane (PCS) fibers were cured by a process of alternating air and vacuum atmosphere periodically at thermal oxidation temperature. It was found that the oxygen diffusion in the micron PCS fibers could be observed and controlled by this novel curing process. The out surface layer of the cured fibers was rich in oxygen while the inner core had a lower status. Chemical structure analysis indicated that the groups of Si–H, Si–CH2–Si, and Si–CH3 in the out surface layer were oxidized into oxygen containing structures such as Si–OH, Si–O–Si and CO. Ascribe to the controlled oxygen diffusion, the oxidation degree of the inner core was much lower than the surface layer. The oxygen containing structures, Si–H bond reaction degree, molecular weight and ceramic yield of the cured PCS fibers increased with thermal oxidation temperature and alternating cycles. Theoretical calculation results demonstrated that the Si–H bonds reacted with oxygen was the main reason which made the PCS fiber increase weight. This modified process was a high effective surface layer oxidation curing method. Moreover, silicon carbide (SiC) or silicon nitride (Si3N4) ceramic fibers with skin-core or hollow structure also could be prepared from the surface cured PCS fibers with proper following process.

Liu, Shuwei; Wang, Lu; Zhao, Bin; Wang, Ze; Wang, Yinyu; Sun, Bin; Liu, Yi

doi: 10.1039/d0ra03069dpmid: 35519742

In clinical tumor therapy, traditional treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy all have their own limitations. With the development of nanotechnology, new therapeutic methods based on nanomaterials such as photothermal therapy (PTT) have also emerged. PTT takes advantage of the poor thermal tolerance of tumor cells and uses the heat generated by photothermal reagents to kill tumor cells. A transition metal sulfide represented as Cu2S is an ideal photothermal reagent because of its easy preparation, high extinction coefficient and photothermal conversion efficiency. Surface modification of nanoparticles (NPs) is also necessary, which not only can reduce toxicity and improve colloidal stability, but also can provide the possibility of further chemotherapeutic drug loading. In this work, we report the fabrication of Tween-20 (Tw20)-modified and doxorubicin (Dox)-loaded Cu2S NPs (Cu2S/Dox@Tw20 NPs), which significantly improves the performance in tumor therapy. Apart from the enhancement of colloidal stability and biocompatibility, the drug loading rate of Dox in Tw20 reaches 11.3%. Because of the loading of Dox, Cu2S/Dox@Tw20 NPs exhibit chemotherapeutic behaviors and the tumor inhibition rate is 76.2%. Further combined with a near-infrared laser, the high temperature directly leads to the apoptosis of a large number of tumor cells, while the release of chemotherapeutic drugs under heat can not only continue to kill residual tumor cells, but also inhibit tumor recurrence. Therefore, with the combination of PTT and chemotherapy, the tumor was completely eliminated. Both hematological analysis and histopathological analysis proved that our experiments are safe.

He, Peipei; Mao, Tianyu; Wang, Anming; Yin, Youcheng; Shen, Jinying; Chen, Haoming; Zhang, Pengfei

doi: 10.1039/d0ra03783dpmid: 35519754

To treat waste with waste and efficiently remove the organic pollutant, waste palladiums(ii) were adsorbed and reduced on microorganism surface to catalyze the reductive removal of ciprofloxacin in pharmaceutical wastewater. By optimizing conditions such as pH and temperature, the amount of biogenic palladium adsorbed and reduced on E. coli reached 139.48 mg g−1 (Pd/microorganisms). Moreover, most of the Pd(ii) was reduced to nanometer-sized Pd(0) as characterized by TEM and SEM with EDXA. Using the obtained biogenic palladium, the reductive removal of ciprofloxacin is up to 87.70% at 25 °C, 3.03 folds of that achieved in the absence of H2. The results show that waste E. coli microorganisms can efficiently adsorb and remove waste Pd(ii) and produce Bio-Pd nanoparticle catalysts in the presence of H2. This biogenic palladium presents high catalytic activity and great advantages in the reductive degradation of ciprofloxacin. Our method can also be applied to other waste metal ions to prepare the biogenic metals, facilitate their recovery and reuse in degrading organic pollutants in wastewater to achieve “treating waste using waste”.

Kwolek, Przemysław

doi: 10.1039/d0ra04215cpmid: 35519786

The objective of this work was to establish the influence of sodium molybdate on the corrosion kinetics of 7075 aluminium alloy in orthophosphoric acid aqueous solution. Corrosion rate was decreased from 75.98 to 3.24 g per m2 per day. The mechanism of corrosion inhibition was studied using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectrophotometry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. It was revealed that heteropolyoxomolybdate species act as the corrosion inhibitor. They adsorb onto the surface and inhibit an anodic process. Their influence on a cathodic process is much weaker. Phosphomolybdenum blue species do not inhibit corrosion process and their formation is undesirable.

Xu, Menglong; Liu, Yazi; Deng, Yan; Zhang, Siyuan; Hao, Xiaodong; Zhu, Ping; Zhou, Jieyi; Yin, Huaqun; Liang, Yili; Liu, Hongwei; Liu, Xueduan; Bai, Lianyang; Jiang, Luhua; Jiang, Huidan

doi: 10.1039/d0ra03935gpmid: 35519775

Cadmium (Cd) pollution poses a serious risk to human health and ecological security. Bioremediation can be a promising and effective remediation technology for treating Cd contaminated soils. In this study, seven heterotrophic strains were isolated from Cd contaminated soil and 7 autotrophic strains were isolated from acid mine drainage. Cd removal efficiencies were compared after leaching with autotrophic bacteria (Att-sys), heterotrophic isolates (Htt-sys) and cooperative leaching systems (Co-sys) in laboratory agitating reactors. The results indicated that Cd removal efficiency of Co-sys (32.09%) was significantly higher than that of Att-sys (23.24%) and Htt-sys (0.74%). By analyzing the soil microbial community in different bioleaching systems, we found that the addition of heterotrophic isolates significantly promoted the growth of some heavy metal resistant inhabitants (Massilia, Alicyclobacillus, Micromonospora, etc.), and Co-sys had a minor effect on the growth of soil indigenous microbes. In Co-sys, the content of the four Cd fractions all decreased compared with other leaching systems. The analysis of soil physicochemical parameters during the leaching process showed that pH and ORP (oxidation reduction potential) were not the only determinants for Cd removal efficiency in Co-sys, synergistic metabolic activities of autotrophic and heterotrophic strains may be other determinants. This study demonstrated that cooperative bioremediation may prove to be a safe and efficient technique for field application in heavy metal soil pollution.

Zhang, Fan; Zhang, Qun; Yang, Jian; Zhou, Yawen; Zhou, Zhaohui; Wang, Ce

doi: 10.1039/d0ra03713cpmid: 35519770

Interface dilational rheology is useful for understanding and exploring the role of interface phenomena. However, relatively few studies have been conducted on the interface dilational rheological properties of N-acyl aromatic amino acid surfactants. Herein, surface tension and the dynamic interface tension and dilational rheological properties of three surfactants, namely, sodium N-lauroyl phenylalaninate (SLP), sodium N-lauroyl tyrosinate (SLTy), and sodium N-lauroyl citrate (SLTr) were investigated. The results show that the order of critical micelle concentration, which includes the surface tension at the critical micelle concentration, minimum area per surfactant molecule, and interfacial tension, was SLTr < SLTy < SLP. At a low surfactant concentration, the three surfactants exhibited a low-viscosity interfacial elastic film at the n-decane/water interface. The dilational modulus increased and the phase angle decreased with increase in frequency. However, the order of the dilational modulus was SLP < SLTy < SLTr, while the order of the phase angle change was SLTr < SLTy < SLP at the same frequency. With increase in surfactant concentration, the dilational modulus of SLP and SLTy increased and then decreased after a maximum value; however, the dilational modulus plot of SLTr demonstrated two maxima.

Zhao, Yanhui; Wang, Miao; Sun, Lin; Jiang, Xue; Zhao, Min; Zhao, Chunjie

doi: 10.1039/d0ra02264kpmid: 35519733

Sanhua decoction, a famous Chinese herbal formula has been widely used for the treatment of stroke. In our study, a rapid, swift and straightforward analytical method with the help of UHPLC-FT-ICR-MS/MS was successfully developed for the first time to separate and identify the chemical constituents of Sanhua decoction. Chromatography was performed on a Universal XB C18 column (150 mm × 2.1 mm, 1.8 μm) using a mobile phase containing 0.1% formic acid–water (A) and acetonitrile (B). A total of 137 compounds in Sanhua decoction were identified or tentatively characterized. The findings revealed the fact that Sanhua decoction mainly contains flavonoids (in Aurantii fructus immaturus and Rheum palmatum L.), anthraquinones (in Rheum palmatum L.), coumarins (in Notopterygii Rhizoma Et Radix), phenylpropanoid glycosides, alkaloids and lignans (in Magnoliae Officmalis Cortex), which made up the key ingredients existing in Sanhua decoction. This study is hoped to be meaningful for the characterization of components in other traditional Chinese medicines, and lay the foundation for research on the pharmacology of Sanhua decoction.