Drug Design: Do Not Forget the Supramolecular Factor.

A major challenge currently facing medicinal chemists is designing agents that can selectively destroy drug resistant fungi and bacteria that have begun to emerge. One factor that has been overlooked by virtually all drug discovery/development approaches is the supramolecular factor, in which aggregated forms of a drug candidate exhibit low selectivity in destroying targeted cells while the corresponding monomers exhibit high selectivity. This Perspective discusses how we were led to the supramolecular factor through fundamental studies with simple model systems, how we reasoned that the selectivity of monomers of the antifungal agent amphotericin B should be much greater than the selectivity of the corresponding aggregates, and how we confirmed this hypothesis using derivatives of amphotericin B.

Creating Hyperthin Membranes for Gas Separations.

Interest in creating membranes that can separate gases has intensified in recent years owing, in large part, to climate change. Specifically, the need for separating CO and N from flue gas in an economically viable fashion is now considered urgent. This Perspective highlights two recent developments from my laboratory─defect repair of polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMs) using micellar solutions of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and the surface modification of a highly permeable polymer, poly[1-(trimethylsilyl) propyne] (PTMSP)─which I believe have significant implications not only for this CO/N problem but also for the ever-growing area of layer-by-layer (LbL) thin films.