Perspectives in allergen immunotherapy: 2017 and beyond.

The Future of the Allergists and Specific Immunotherapy (FASIT) workshop provides a regular platform for global experts from academia, allergy clinics, regulatory authorities and industry to review developments in the field of allergen immunotherapy (AIT). The most recent meeting, held in February 2017, had two main themes: advances in AIT and hot topics in AIT from the regulatory point of view. The first theme covered opportunities for personalized AIT, advances in adjuvants and delivery systems, and the development of new molecules and future vaccines for AIT.

Luminescent core-shell imprinted nanoparticles engineered for targeted Förster resonance energy transfer-based sensing.

Red-luminescent 200 nm silica nanoparticles have been designed and prepared as a versatile platform for developing FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer) biomimetic assays. Ru(phen)₃²⁺ dye molecules embedded off-center in the silica core provide the long-lived donor emission, and a near-infrared labeled analyte serves as fluorescent acceptor (the measured R₀ of this D-A pair is 4.3 nm).

Two flavors of PEPPSI-IPr: activation and diffusion control in a single NHC-ligated Pd catalyst?

Abnormal reactivity has been observed in Negishi, Suzuki-Miyaura, and Kumada-Tamao-Corriu cross-couplings in which PEPPSI-IPr (where PEPPSI stands for pyridine enhanced precatalyst preparation, stabilization, and initiation and IPr refers to the NHC ligand) is employed, implicating the presence of two distinct Pd(0) species in the catalytic cycle. Polybrominated arenes and organometallic reagents react selectively to give the product of exhaustive polysubstitution regardless of the initial reaction stoichiometry. Competition experiments suggest that, after an initial activation controlled oxidative addition, reductive elimination produces an ultrareactive Pd(0) species which consumes all remaining C-Br bonds in the molecule under diffusion control.