From community to scale: Using community engagement to develop and validate a patient-informed cancer communication scale.

Objective: Racial disparities in clinical communication quality are well-established but most clinical communication assessment tools are created without the collaboration of racially-diverse patient populations. Our objective was to collaborate with Black and White cancer survivors, caregivers, and advocates to develop and validate a tool to assess physicians' patient-centered communication.

Methods: A panel of Black and White cancer survivors, caregivers, and advocates (n = 11) and researchers observed and discussed video-recorded patient-physician cancer clinical interactions to generate and refine a list of physician communication behaviors considered critical for high-quality patient-centered communication.

The Stepping Stone Clubhouse Evaluation: Exploring Members' Experiences, Service Engagement, and Perceived Impact of the Clubhouse International Model.

The Clubhouse Model of Psychosocial Rehabilitation provides non-clinical social support for adults living with a diagnosed mental illness or self-reported mental ill-health (referred to as 'members'). The Stepping Stone Clubhouse in Brisbane, Australia was evaluated between August 2022 and August 2023 using a participatory action research approach. Data was sourced from member surveys, member interviews, and an existing Clubhouse Member Database.

Engineered enzymes for enantioselective nucleophilic aromatic substitutions.

Nucleophilic aromatic substitutions (SAr) are amongst the most widely used processes in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries, allowing convergent assembly of complex molecules through C-C and C-X (X = O, N, S) bond formation. SAr reactions are typically carried out using forcing conditions, involving polar aprotic solvents, stoichiometric bases and elevated temperatures, which do not allow for control over reaction selectivity. Despite the importance of SAr chemistry, there are only a handful of selective catalytic methods reported that rely on small organic hydrogen-bonding or phase-transfer catalysts.

Probing Ferryl Reactivity in a Nonheme Iron Oxygenase Using an Expanded Genetic Code.

The ability to introduce noncanonical amino acids as axial ligands in heme enzymes has provided a powerful experimental tool for studying the structure and reactivity of their Fe=O ("ferryl") intermediates. Here, we show that a similar approach can be used to perturb the conserved Fe coordination environment of 2-oxoglutarate (2OG) dependent oxygenases, a versatile class of enzymes that employ highly-reactive ferryl intermediates to mediate challenging C-H functionalizations. Replacement of one of the cis-disposed histidine ligands in the oxygenase VioC with a less electron donating -methyl-histidine (MeHis) preserves both catalytic function and reaction selectivity.

Noncanonical Amino Acids in Biocatalysis.

In recent years, powerful genetic code reprogramming methods have emerged that allow new functional components to be embedded into proteins as noncanonical amino acid (ncAA) side chains. In this review, we will illustrate how the availability of an expanded set of amino acid building blocks has opened a wealth of new opportunities in enzymology and biocatalysis research. Genetic code reprogramming has provided new insights into enzyme mechanisms by allowing introduction of new spectroscopic probes and the targeted replacement of individual atoms or functional groups.