Publications by authors named "Angel Romero"

Herein, we have showed the photophysical properties of favipiravir and its 6-substituted analogues. Also, we interpreted the origin of fluorescence of favipiravir and its 6-substituted analogues as a function of tautomerism modulation in ground and excited states. Favipiravir, the 6-fluorine derivative, showed the best photophysical profile, exhibiting a dominant emission wavelength of 430 nm, a high quantum yield (Q.

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We sought to identify a potent and selective antitrypanosomal agent through modulation of the mechanism of action of a 2-arylquinazoline scaffold as an antitrypanosomal agent chemical functionalization at the 4-position. We wished to use the: (i) susceptibility of trypanosomatids towards nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS); (ii) capacity of the 4-substituted quinazoline system to act as an antifolate agent. Three quinazolin-based moieties that differed from each other by having at the 4-position key pharmacophores targeting the induction of NO and ROS production were evaluated against and parasites and their modes of action were explored.

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Article Synopsis
  • Favipiravir is an antiviral drug approved for treating influenza and shows promise against COVID-19 by blocking RNA replication of the virus.
  • The drug's effectiveness is limited due to low plasma levels and poor conversion to its active form, motivating researchers to design new analogues by modifying its chemical structure.
  • In vitro studies reveal that while some modifications did not enhance antiviral activity due to low solubility, acetylation significantly improved the effectiveness of favipiravir's analogues compared to the original compound.
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  • The text discusses recent advancements in using Selectfluor for C-H bond functionalization of N-heteroarenes, which is a more sustainable alternative to traditional methods involving toxic metals or peroxides.
  • Selectfluor allows for diverse chemical modifications, making it a valuable tool in organic synthesis.
  • The review organizes the strategies into four categories: carbon-carbon, carbon-nitrogen, carbon-chalcogen, and carbon-halogen bond formations, and also explores the mechanisms and conditions for these reactions.
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  • The paper examines how to design better control systems for agile mobile robots, specifically in the context of autonomous drone racing.
  • Researchers found that a neural network controller using reinforcement learning (RL) outperformed traditional optimal control (OC) methods due to RL's ability to optimize more relevant objectives.
  • The study highlights the limitations of OC's planning-control decomposition, which constrains behavior, while RL adapts better to uncertainties, achieving impressive drone performance with rapid training.
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Significance: The progression of myopia increased in children after the pandemic confinement. A myopic shift in the refractive error of the Hispanic population was found regardless of the refractive status of the school-aged children studied.

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the refractive error in Puerto Rican children before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Favipiravir is an important selective antiviral against RNA-based viruses, and currently, it is being repurposed as a potential drug for the treatment of COVID-19. This type of chemical system presents different carboxamide-rotameric and hydroxyl-tautomeric states, which could be essential for interpreting its selective antiviral activity. Herein, the tautomeric 3-hydroxypyrazine/3-pyrazinone pair of favipiravir and its 6-substituted analogues, 6-Cl, 6-Br, 6-I, and 6-H, were fully investigated in solution and in the solid state through ultraviolet-visible, H nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction techniques.

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Double-blind peer review is considered a pillar of academic research because it is perceived to ensure a fair, unbiased, and fact-centered scientific discussion. Yet, experienced researchers can often correctly guess from which research group an anonymous submission originates, biasing the peer-review process. In this work, we present a transformer-based, neural-network architecture that only uses the text content and the author names in the bibliography to attribute an anonymous manuscript to an author.

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Studying the metal-ligand monoligation of alkali/alkaline earth metals (AMs) in solution represents a significant challenge due to the low stabilization of their complexes and the absence of an effective strategy to identify this type of weak binding. Herein, we show that the modulation of the intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) in an excited ambidentate organic fluorophore is a convenient strategy to characterize the binding chemistry of AM cations in solution through simple steady-state fluorescence and fluorescence lifetime measurements. The key points of the fluorophore as a metal-binding probe were the location of diverse coordination functionalities with different binding abilities (ionic-, pseudo-covalent- and non-covalent-probes) along the donor-acceptor (D-A) chain and the occurrence of an intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) mechanism upon excitation.

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Favipiravir is an important selective antiviral that emerged as an alternative against COVID-19 during the pandemic. Its synthesis has gained great interest and the conventional strategies proceed through multiple-step protocols (6-7 reaction steps), which involve, in addition, several drawbacks with global yields, lower than 34%. Herein, a simple, economical, eco-friendly and scalable (1 g) one-step protocol for the synthesis of favipiravir from the direct fluorination of the available 3-hydroxy-2-pyrazinecarboxamide with Selectfluor® is reported.

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Nitric oxide (NO) represents a valuable target to design antitrypanosomal agents by its high toxicity against trypanosomatids and minimal side effects on host macrophages. The progress of NO-donors as antitrypanosomal has been restricted by the high toxicity of their agents, which usually is based on NO-heterocycles and metallic NO-complexes. Herein, we carried out the design of a new class of NO-donors based on the susceptibility of the hydrazine moiety connected to an electron-deficient ring to be reduced to the amine moiety with release of NO.

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Autonomous, agile quadrotor flight raises fundamental challenges for robotics research in terms of perception, planning, learning, and control. A versatile and standardized platform is needed to accelerate research and let practitioners focus on the core problems. To this end, we present Agilicious, a codesigned hardware and software framework tailored to autonomous, agile quadrotor flight.

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The determination of acidity represents a significant challenge within fluorometry, and no effective strategy has been developed successfully yet. It is attributed to the fact that acidity tends to be enhanced upon excitation, giving, in general, an overestimation of the ionization constant, p. Herein, we developed a strategy for p estimation of Brønsted acids in solution through fluorometry by using a convenient p probe, -aryl-7-methoxy-2-(trifluoromethyl)benzo[][1,8]naphthyridin-4(1)-one.

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The βhematin formation is a unique process adopted by sp. to detoxify free heme and represents a validated target to design new effective antimalarials. Most of the βhematin inhibitors are mainly based on 4-aminoquinolines, but the parasite has developed diverse defense mechanisms against this type of chemical system.

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Adding to the versatile class of ionic liquids, we report the detailed structure and property analysis of a new class of asymmetrically substituted imidazolium salts, offering interesting thermal characteristics, such as liquid crystalline behavior, polymorphism or glass transitions. A scalable general synthetic procedure for N-polyaryl-N'-alkyl-functionalized imidazolium salts with para-substituted linker (L) moieties at the aryl chain, namely [LPh Im R] (L=Br, CN, SMe, CO Et, OH; m=2, 3; R=C , PEG ; n=2, 3, 4), was developed. These imidazolium salts were studied by single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD), NMR spectroscopy and thermochemical methods (DSC, TGA).

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Diverse models of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) have been proposed for interpreting the origin of the charge-transfer (CT) state in donor-acceptor (D-A) dyes. However, a large variety of fused-heterocyclic dyes containing a pseudo-aromatic ring in the rigid structure have shown to be incompatible with them. To approximate a solution within the ICT concept, we reported a novel ICT model called partially aromatized intramolecular charge transfer (PAICT).

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Quadrotors are among the most agile flying robots. However, planning time-optimal trajectories at the actuation limit through multiple waypoints remains an open problem. This is crucial for applications such as inspection, delivery, search and rescue, and drone racing.

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A series of six 3-aryl-6-(N-methylpiperazin)-1,2,4-triazolo[3,4-a]phthalazines were prepared through a facile and efficient one-pot copper-catalyzed procedure from 4-chloro-1-phthalazinyl-arylhydrazones with relatively good yields (62-83%). The one-pot copper-catalytic procedure consists of two simultaneous reactions: (i) a direct intramolecular dehydrogentaive cyclization between ylidenic carbon and adjacent pyrazine nitrogen to form 1,2,4-triazolo ring and, (ii) a direct N-amination on carbon-chlorine bond. Then, an in vitro anticancer evaluation was performed for the synthesized compounds against five selected human cancer cells (A549, MCF-7, SKBr3, PC-3 and HeLa).

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The present review highlights the most important recent contributions toward the synthesis of functionalized fused heteroaromatic rings via intramolecular C-H activation mediated or catalyzed by transition metals. This type of reaction constitutes a versatile strategy to obtain a great variety of fused heterocyclic systems through the formation of carbon-carbon (C-C) and C-heteroatom bonds from direct coupling between two adjacent C-H bonds or C-H/H-X bonds. The  revision is focused on the synthesis of fused heterocycles through two chemical processes: (1) metal-catalyzed intramolecular oxidative C-H activation, and (2) intramolecular C-H activation mediated by metallic Lewis acids.

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Article Synopsis
  • A series of eight new compounds, 1,4-bis(substituted benzalhydrazino)phthalazines, were tested for their effectiveness against the Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania mexicana parasites, with two compounds (3b and 3f) showing promising results.
  • Compound 3b demonstrated strong anti-leishmanial activity, outperforming the traditional treatment glucantime against resistant strains, while both compounds had moderate toxicity levels but good selectivity for the parasites.
  • Further studies are recommended for compound 3b to explore its pharmacokinetics and potential as an antileishmanial agent, while ruling out superoxide dismutase inhibition as its mechanism of action.
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Traditional antimalarial drugs based on 4-aminoquinolines have exhibited good antiproliferative activities against Leishmania parasites; however, their clinical use is currently limited. To identify new 4-aminoquinolines to combat American cutaneous leishmaniasis, we carried out a full in vitro evaluation of a series of dehydroxy isoquines and isotebuquines against two Leishmania parasites such as Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania mexicana. First, the antiproliferative activity of the quinolines was studied against the promastigote forms of L.

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Malaria represents a significant health issue, and novel effective drugs are needed to address parasite resistance that has emerged to the current drug arsenal. The most popular antimalarial drugs are focused on the 7-chloro-4-aminoquinoline [e.g.

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Traditional antimalarial drugs based on 4-aminoquinolines have exhibited good antiproliferative activities against human tumor cells; however, their low relative efficacy has limited their corresponding clinical uses. In order to identify new potent anticancer agents based on 4-aminoquinoline, we evaluated the antiproliferative activity of a series of dehydroxy isoquines and isotebuquines against five human cancer lines. HeLa and SKBr3 were significantly more sensitive to the action of tested quinolines than the A549, MCF-7, and PC-3 cancer lines.

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To identify new agents for the American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis treatment, a series of 2-aryl-quinazolin-4(3H)-ones were tested against L. mexicana, L. braziliensis and L.

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Article Synopsis
  • Trifluoromethyl-substituted quinolones and their derivatives have been found effective against flagellate parasites, particularly Plasmodium spp.
  • A study evaluated the antiproliferative effects of new compounds on Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania mexicana, finding that L. mexicana was more susceptible to treatment.
  • Three specific compounds showed moderate efficacy against both promastigotes and intracellular amastigotes, suggesting they could serve as potential new treatments for leishmaniasis, especially against drug-resistant strains.
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