Laura had the amazing opportunity to visit the University of Valencia on the 27th of April in order to gain additional cell study knowledge. Laura completed a month of cell studies where she learnt all the biological techiches for cultivating cells and testing her compounds. This was done with the aid of Isabel Abanades Lazaro and her group at the Crystal Engineering Lab (CEL), which is part of the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) at the University of Valencia. Congratulations to Laura for making another big commitment towards her research!
Tómas visited Prof. Ronan Daly at the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge in order to do some extensive rheological studies on his soft materials. Dr. Niamh Willis-Fox, a post-doctoral researcher within his group, consulted him with the experiments and together they managed to collect great data. Big thanks to Ronan, Niamh and the rest of the group for the invaluable experience!
A big congratulations to all the collaborators involved in the newley published paper“Tripodal 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxamide ligand with dipicolinic acid units and its binding with Eu(III) ions,” Supramolecular Chemistry 2023, 1-10 (DOI: 10.1080/10610278.2023.2177162). The work involved the synthesis of tripodal ligands, which was carried out by two visiting students, Niklas Klangwart from Germany and Céline Ruijs from Belgium. Photocatalytic studies in various solvents confirmed luminescent metal-ligand self-assembly species with Eu(III) ions. Crystallography was conducted by a previous group member Dr. Chris Hawes and the collective work was led by Dr. Oxana Kotova, one of our group Post-Docs.
A big thank you to all collaborators and Prof. Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson for all their efforts in this article, which is also open access!
Many congratulations to Dr Helen O’Connor on the publication of the review article “Photoinduced electron transfer (PeT) based fluorescent probes for cellular imaging and disease therapy”, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2023, 52, 2322-2357 (DOI: 10.1039/D1CS01097B). This was a big collaborative effort involving Prof. Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson, Prof. Tony James, and Prof. Hua Zhang and members of her group. A big thank you to everyone involved and gratitude and acknowledgements to the Irish Research Council (IRC) for financial support. The article was featured as a front cover and is Open Access!
July was an excellent month for the TG group with two manuscripts having been accepted for publication in the ACS journal “Inorganic Chemistry“. Both publications are part of our medicinal chemistry programme where we develop luminescent coordination complexes for targeting DNA and cancer cells.
Many congratulations to Raju (Prof. Sankarasekaran Shanmugaraju) our collaborator from the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad, and his team member Binduja Mohan, who in collaboration with Deivasigamani Umadevi, and our TCD team, Sandra Estalayo-Adrián, Bjørn la Cour Poulsen, Salvador Blasco from the School of Chemistry and Gavin J. McManus from the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, headed up the work on: “Design, Synthesis, and Anticancer Studies of a p-Cymene-Ru(II)-Curcumin Organometallic Conjugate Based on a Fluorescent 4-Amino-1,8-naphthalimide Tröger’s Base Scaffold,”Inorganic Chemistry 2022, 61, 30, 11592-11599 (DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c01005).
And many congratulations to our former PhD student Dr. Gary J. Ryan on his publication “Hook, Line and Sinker! Spectroscopic studies of bi-modular mono- and bis-1,8-naphthalimide-Ru(bpy)3-conjugates as DNA ‘light switches’.” His work was carried out as part of the TG-groups highly productive and long-standing collaboration with Prof. Susan J. Quinn, at University College Dublin (UCD), that will appear as an open access soon! (Inorg. Chem. 2022, 61, Accepted. (DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c00064).
Many congratulations to Dr. Tumpa Gorai on the publication of her paper “Hierarchical supramolecular co-assembly formation employing multi-component light-harvesting charge transfer interactions giving rise to long-wavelength emitting luminescent microspheres” in the latest edition of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, “Chemical Science”(DOI:10.1039/d2sc02097a). Gratitude and acknowledgements to the Irish Research Council (IRC), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) for financial support, and the TCD School of Chemistry.
This work demonstrates the formation of green luminescent microspheres from the charge transfer (CT) interaction-induced co-assembly of a bis-naphthyl dipicolinic amide (DPA) derivative with tetracyanobenzene (TCNB), and the light-harvesting tri-component self-assembly of CT complex with red-emitting dye, pyronin Y. Confocal microscopy imaging was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Gavin McManus. The X-ray crystal structure analysis by Dr. June I. Lovitt and the theoretical calculation by Dr. Deivasigamani Umadevi revealed the alternative stacking arrangement of DPA donor and TCNB acceptor. This work is directed toward exploring chiral co-crystal for advanced optoelectronics applications.
A massive congratulations to Dr. Oxana Kotova for her paper on “Lanthanide luminescence from supramolecular hydrogels consisting of bio-conjugated picolinic-acid-based guanosine quadruplexes” being published in the latest edition of the cell press journal, “Chem” (DOI:10.1016/j.chempr.2022.01.015). Gratitude and acknowledgments to SFI and AMBER for financial support,the TCD School of Chemistry, and the collaborators involved in this work.
This excellent work incorporated guanosine quadruplexes (G4) attached to a mannose-derived picolinic acid ligand, which enabled the binding of Eu(III). As a result, a stable hydrogel with self-healing properties was formed, exhibiting Eu(III)-centered circularly polariserd luminescence (CPL) which was influenced by the helical nature these guanosine quadruplexes. This work can contribute to advancing chiral-based emission and has illuminated many pathways for the structure’s use in several fields. Examples include, monitoring bilogical processes, use in responsive counterfeiting inks for bank note printing and much more.
We’re very excited to see the bright future this work will be directed in!
Many congratulations to Dawn E. Barry, who in collaboration with Komala Pandurangan, Aramballi Jayant Savyasachi, Robert D. Peacock (University of Glasgow) and Jonathan A. Kitchen (Massey University) and their contribution: “Formation of enantiomerically pure luminescent triple-stranded dimetallic europium helicates and their corresponding hierarchical self-assembly formation in protic polar solutions” accepted for publication in Inorg. Chem. (DOI:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c00058). The work was supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and demonstrates the use of lanthanide directed synthesis of supramolecular structures from chiral organic ligands, and their application in the formation of higher order (hierarchical) structures (microparticles) which were analysed using high-resolution imaging facilities here at the AML unit (part of AMBER and CRANN).
Many congratulations to Jason on his paper “Aggregation induced emission (AIE) active 4-amino-1,8-naphthalimide-Tröger’s base for the selective sensing of chemical explosives in competitive aqueous media”, which has been accepted in Chem. Commun., (DOI: 10.1039/c9cc08457f). The synthesis of the target ligand (shown below) and all the sensing/supramolecular/materials aspects of the work was carried out by Jason in collaboration with Prof. Sankarasekaran Shanmugaraju (Raju) from the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad, Kerala (https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/shanmugam) and Oxana (form the TG research group), while the computational part of the work was overseen and executed by Deivasigamani Umadevi in collaboration with Prof. Graeme W. Watson from the School of Chemistry. This work, once again, demonstrates the versatility of the naphthalimide-Tröger’s base building unit within supramolecular chemistry.
It is an incredible time of the year for Doctor Anna Aletti! After her graduation ceremony, in fact, we are delighted to report another great news about her. Anna’s paper, published on the Journal of Organic Chemistry (J. Org. Chem., 2019, 84 (7), pp 4221–4228; DOI:10.1021/acs.joc.9b00219) was featured on their webpage. The work, entitled “Halide-Controlled Extending–Shrinking Motion of a Covalent Cage” was a collaborative project that was headed up by Anna’s former mentor at Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia, Professor Valeria Amendola and was part of Anna’s PhD thesis here in TCD.
Many congratulations to June, now in her second PhD year, who has had her paper with Chris Hawes (former member of the TG Group and now and independent lecturer at the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Keele University, UK, named “Crystallographic studies of 2-picolyl substituted naphthalene diimide and bis-phthalimide ligands and their supramolecular coordination chemistry”, accepted for publication in CrystEngComm (DOI: 10.1039/C8CE01756E). This work is another excellent outcome of a very fruitful collaboration between the group and Chris, based on exploring the supramolecular application of naphthalene-based building blocks with various d-metal ions, featuring extended analysis of the various complexes formed by using single crystal structure analysis, but Chris was instrumental (as well as Brendan Twamley) in training several members of the TG group in carrying out their own X-ray analysis.
Gunnlaugsson Group, Trinity College Dublin 