Recognition of Hydrophilic Cyclic Compounds by a Water-Soluble Cavitand

Supramolecular platinum complexes for cancer therapy

The rise of supramolecular chemistry offers new tools to design therapeutics and delivery platforms for biomedical applications. This review aims to highlight the recent developments that harness host-guest interactions and self-assembly to design novel supramolecular Pt complexes as anticancer agents and drug delivery systems. These complexes range from small host-guest structures to large metallosupramolecules and nanoparticles. These supramolecular complexes integrate the biological properties of Pt compounds and novel supramolecular structures, which inspires new designs of anticancer approaches that overcome problems in conventional Pt drugs. Based on the differences in Pt cores and supramolecular structures, this review focuses on five different types of supramolecular Pt complexes, and they include host-guest complexes of the FDA-approved Pt(II) drugs, supramolecular complexes of nonclassical Pt(II) metallodrugs, supramolecular complexes of fatty acid-like Pt(IV) prodrugs, self-assembled nanotherapeutics of Pt(IV) prodrugs, and self-assembled Pt-based metallosupramolecules.

Recent Advances in the Applications of Water-soluble Resorcinarene-based Deep Cavitands

We review here the use of container molecules known as cavitands for performing organic reactions in water. Central to these endeavors are binding forces found in water, and among the strongest of these is the hydrophobic effect. We describe how the hydrophobic effect can be used to drive organic molecule guests into the confined space of cavitand hosts. Other forces participating in guest binding include cation-π interactions, chalcogen bonding and even hydrogen bonding to water involved in the host structure. The reactions of guests take advantage of their contortions in the limited space of the cavitands which enhance macrocyclic and site-selective processes. The cavitands are applied to the removal of organic pollutants from water and to the separation of isomeric guests. Progress is described on maneuvering the containers from stoichiometric participation to roles as catalysts.