In the battle against cancer and other diseases, scientists are developing molecular weapons that can be used to stop uncontrollable cell growth.

A team of Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital scientists have found that “cyclimids,” a class of binding molecules known as ligands, offer a promising and efficient approach to removing disease-causing or malfunctioning proteins. Their distinct properties enable scientists to attack errant proteins at their molecular roots.

“For over a year we had been...

Read more about New research: A molecular ‘warhead’ against disease

Messenger RNA (mRNA) made its big leap into the public limelight during the pandemic, thanks to its cornerstone role in several COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNAs, which are genetic sequences that instruct the body to produce proteins, are also being developed as a new class of drugs. For mRNAs to have broad therapeutic uses, however, the molecules will need to last longer in the body than those that make up the COVID vaccines. 

Researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT have engineered a new mRNA structure by adding multiple “tails” to the molecules that...

Read more about New research: Messenger RNAs with multiple “tails” could lead to more effective therapeutics

CCB graduate student Brandon Campbell, a member of the Novcera Lab,  has been selected as the recipient of the International Precious Metals Institute (IPMI) Graduate Student Award. This award recognizes Brandon's outstanding research conducted in Professor Nocera's group focusing on silver chemistry.

...

Read more about Brandon Campbell wins the IPM Graduate Student Award

Harvard University chemist Daniel Kahne has spent much of his career studying the fundamentals of how bacteria thrive and evade attack.

His lab has a special interest in gram-negative bacteria, which have an outer membrane that many antibiotics cannot cross.

Among these bacteria is carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, or CRAB. Designated by the World Health Organization as a “critical priority” for antibiotic development, CRAB kills hundreds of critically ill patients in the U.S....

Read more about New research: Paving the Way for a New Class of Antibiotics

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology is welcoming oral and poster presentation abstracts for 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium scheduled for 30 April 2024 between 8:00 am-4:00 pm.

... Read more about Applications open for CCB's 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium

 

Chem-145 undergraduates have published a paper on oxygen sensing  in the journal Acta Crystallographica Section C: Structural Chemistry. Undergraduate authors include Zane S. Dash, Raymond Q. Huang, ...

Read more about Chem-145 undergraduates publish paper on oxygen sensing

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Harvard Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, and Utrecht University have reported on a previously elusive way to improve the selectivity of catalytic reactions, adding a new method of increasing the efficacy of catalysts for a potentially wide range of applications in various industries including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and much more. 

The research is published in ...

Read more about New research: Towards more efficient catalysts

By Yahya Chaudhry

As a junior at Brighton High School in 2022, Roshaun Knight was unsure about his plans after graduation. An ambitious student, Knight had always wanted to go to college but had been putting off the application process, until he participated in the inaugural Harvard Chemistry High School Laboratory Skills (HSLS) summer internship program.

“Working with professors during the internship and working with other students confirmed to me that college is something I wanted to do,” Knight said...

Read more about Chemistry Internship Reunion Celebrates Success of Local High Schoolers

We are proud to present our fourth edition of CCB Magazine! 

Click here to access the online edition.

Send us your comments and questions to the editor at yahya_chaudhry@fas.harvard.edu.

In this fourth...

Read more about CCB publishes fourth edition of CCB Magazine

Like the human gut, the female genital tract is its own complex microbial ecosystem, where billions of beneficial bacteria make their home. The way Harvard chemist Emily Balskus sees it, the vaginal microbiome is an underappreciated, understudied part of the body where critically important chemistry takes place.

The Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and a Howard...

Read more about New research: Vaginal bacteria must eat to survive — but how?

Chem-145 undergraduates have published a paper on porphyrins in the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines (worldscientific.com). Undergraduate authors include Cierra Brown, Tina Chen, Richard K. Darkwa, Geena Kim, Danielle J. Kranchalk, Hannah Lamport, Colin M-D. Le, Jenny Lu, Giovan N. McKnight, and Nikhil V. Seshadri. Other authors include Nejc Nagelj, a Teaching Fellow, and Kristopher G. Reynolds, a graduate student...

Read more about Chem-145 undergraduates publish paper on porphyrins

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research announced 16 outstanding projects in its latest class of ASPIRE awards, granting more than $5 million for research that aims to answer key feasibility and proof-of-concept questions in an accelerated time frame, and scaling for impact based upon initial success. The high-risk nature of these projects, often based on new ideas that have generated limited preliminary data, tends to place them outside the scope of other funding opportunities.

Christina Woo won her work: ...

Read more about Christina Woo wins a 2023 ASPIRE Award

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Peru and the United States. It also changed the chemistry and dynamics of the stratosphere in the year following the eruption, leading to unprecedented losses in the ozone layer of up to 7% over large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National...

Read more about New research: Massive 2022 eruption reduced ozone levels

A new startup, Quino Energy, aims to bring to market a grid-scale energy storage solution developed by Harvard researchers to facilitate more widespread adoption of renewable energy sources.

About 12% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation currently comes from wind and solar sources, which fluctuate with daily weather conditions. For wind and solar to play a greater role in the decarbonization of the electricity grid while reliably meeting consumer demand, grid operators recognize the need to deploy energy storage systems, but these have not yet proved cost-effective at...

Read more about Clean-tech startup Quino Energy launches to create grid-scale battery infrastructure for greater use of wind and solar power

Via OTD

CytoTronics, a biotechnology company building a next-generation complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-powered drug discovery platform, today announced it has raised $9.25M in initial seed funding, led by Anzu Partners with...

Read more about CytoTronics launches to tackle drug discovery and phenotypic screening