Tag: pharmaceuticals

From pollution to solution: Optimizing CO2 conversion for a sustainable future

From pollution to solution: Optimizing CO2 conversion for a sustainable future

University of Toronto researchers finetune device that converts carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, which is used in production of fuels, plastics, pharmaceuticals

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are fueling climate change—causing extreme weather, rising sea levels, and harm to ecosystems.

Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) have found a way to optimize a device that helps convert CO2 into a variety of useful products including ethanol, plastics, and even pharmaceuticals.

CO2 electrolyzers (machines that uses electricity to break a substance—most often water—into its original parts), use electricity to turn CO2 and water into carbon monoxide (CO), an industrial gas used for making fuels such as ethanol, plastics, and even pharmaceuticals. Some electrolyzers work by being compressed or pressurized. However, the tiny pores inside these devices can become clogged with liquid and salt crystals if too much compression pressure is applied, which hinders their performance.

The U of T team used the Canadian Light Source (CLS), a national research facility at the University of Saskatchewan, to study in microscopic detail the inner workings of an electrolyzer while it was running.  They found that reducing the compression pressure to 10% from 20% or 30% prevented blockages and maximized output of CO. The researchers published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

“The pores in our device are about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. We needed the CLS to study our device at that level of resolution,” says Tess Seip a recent PhD graduate, who worked on this project along with postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Aida Farsi, who led the study at the U of T.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Members of the research team from the University of Toronto

Understanding bacteria’s role in transforming steroids to pharmaceuticals

Understanding bacteria’s role in transforming steroids to pharmaceuticals

Identifying 3D structure of enzymes by University of Guelph researchers key first step in harnessing alterations for disease treatments.

For decades, pharmaceutical companies have been using bacteria found in soil and water to chemically convert steroids into effective treatments for human diseases. One example is cortisol, which is used to treat asthma and skin rashes. But how bacteria convert steroids is not fully understood.

Now a research team from the University of Guelph has taken a significant step forward in answering that question. Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Stephen Seah and colleagues have determined the 3D structures of steroid-transforming enzymes from Proteobacteria (also called Pseudomonadota), a large, diverse family of gram-negative bacteria named after Proteus – the shape-shifting Greek sea god.Video: Understanding bacteria’s role in transforming steroids to pharmaceuticals

Studying the 3D structure of these enzymes, which Seah says would be impossible without the ultrabright X-ray source of the CLS, is key to understanding how this Proteobacteria chemically transforms steroids – such as bile acids – which are typically resistant to being changed.

Seah and his colleagues found that the bacteria have evolved to transform steroids as a means to obtain carbon and energy for their own growth. However, he says, these transformations can be harnessed to chemically alter steroids into compounds that we can use for disease treatments; a discovery that will help advance future pharmaceutical development.

“If we understand the process, we can manipulate other bacteria to produce novel compounds that may have medicinal properties,” says Seah. “I think my work helps fill in this gap of knowledge.” The team’s research findings were published recently in both the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Biochemistry.

This new research, says Seah, also opens the door to exploring the potential of other enzymes in bacteria to change the chemical structure of steroids. “In other words, one could create steroids with diverse chemical structures using the many steroid-modifying enzymes that bacteria produced to alter naturally occurring steroids,” he says. “Some of these modified steroids may have therapeutic properties.”

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Protein structure

Credit: CLS

Effective and environmentally friendly removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater under visible light

Effective and environmentally friendly removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater under visible light

The research team working under the leadership of Prof. Anna Zielińska-Jurek from the Faculty of Chemistry at Gdańsk University of Technology, in cooperation with scientists from ASTRA beamline, developed and characterized a new semiconductor material based on bismuth orthovanadate (BiVO4) and copper oxide sub-nanoclusters (CuOx). This material, when exposed to visible light, is able to effectively remove pharmaceuticals in water. Measurements made at the SOLARIS synchrotron using X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) revealed the oxidation state of copper oxides. The research results were published in the journal “Separation and Purification Technology” from Elsevier publisher.

The rapid development of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry has made pharmaceutical pollution one of the greatest environmental dangers. Some of the most frequently detected pharmaceuticals in Polish sewage are naproxen, a popular painkiller, and ofloxacin, an antibiotic. These compounds, found in rivers, lakes or seas, are persistent and not susceptible to biological degradation, and conventional methods used in sewage treatment plants are insufficient to remove them.

A promising way to remove pharmaceuticals from the aqueous phase is their degradation in the process of heterogeneous photocatalysis supported by peroxymonosulfate ions (HSO5−, PMS). These processes are based on the generation of highly reactive radicals under sunlight, which, as a result of reaction with pollutants, are able to purify water.

Read more on Solaris website

Superconducting X-ray laser reaches operating temperature colder than outer space

Superconducting X-ray laser reaches operating temperature colder than outer space

The facility, LCLS-II, will soon sharpen our view of how nature works on ultrasmall, ultrafast scales, impacting everything from quantum devices to clean energy.

Nestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Crews have successfully cooled the accelerator to minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit – or 2 kelvins – a temperature at which it becomes superconducting and can boost electrons to high energies with nearly zero energy lost in the process. It is one of the last milestones before LCLS-II will produce X-ray pulses that are 10,000 times brighter, on average, than those of LCLS and that arrive up to a million times per second – a world record for today’s most powerful X-ray light sources.

“In just a few hours, LCLS-II will produce more X-ray pulses than the current laser has generated in its entire lifetime,” says Mike Dunne, director of LCLS. “Data that once might have taken months to collect could be produced in minutes. It will take X-ray science to the next level, paving the way for a whole new range of studies and advancing our ability to develop revolutionary technologies to address some of the most profound challenges facing our society.”

With these new capabilities, scientists can examine the details of complex materials with unprecedented resolution to drive new forms of computing and communications; reveal rare and fleeting chemical events to teach us how to create more sustainable industries and clean energy technologies; study how biological molecules carry out life’s functions to develop new types of pharmaceuticals; and peek into the bizarre world of quantum mechanics by directly measuring the motions of individual atoms.

A chilling feat

LCLS, the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), produced its first light in April 2009, generating X-ray pulses a billion times brighter than anything that had come before. It accelerates electrons through a copper pipe at room temperature, which limits its rate to 120 X-ray pulses per second.

Read more on the SLAC website

Measuring complex fluids under extreme flow conditions

Measuring complex fluids under extreme flow conditions

Utilizing the unique focusing optics, flexible sample space, and SAXS capabilities at the FMB-beamline, a group of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology measured the rheology and structure of complex fluids subjected to extreme flow velocities while confined within micrometer-sized capillaries.

What did the scientists do?

A capillary rheometer capable of producing high shear rates at the wall, previously developed for neutron scattering, was modified to expand the accessible shear rates up to 107 s-1 when using a high-flux x-ray source with small spot sizes, such as the FMB-beamline at CHESS. Using the new setup optimized for x-ray scattering, the structure and rheology of worm-like micelle solutions were measured at high shear rates to better understand the microstructural alignment, breakdown, and shear thinning rheology of these widely utilized surfactants.

Why is this important?

Worm-like micelle surfactant systems have numerous applications ranging from pharmaceutical formulations to enhanced oil recovery. The simultaneous rheology and x-ray scattering measurements will help link the changes in macroscopic rheological properties to the changes in nanoscale fluid structure such as micelle orientation and length distribution. These measurements are also important to improve rheological models, which currently fail to accurately predict the viscosity of complex fluids at high shear rates.

Read more on the CHESS website

Image: SAXS measurements at the FMB-beamline showed distinct changes in the worm-like micelle structure under flow

We all love science!

We all love science!

#LightSourceSelfie from users of the Australian Light Source

Marta Krasowska (Associate Professor), Sarah Otto (PhD Student) and Stephanie MacWilliams (Early Career Researcher) are scientists based at the University of South Australia. They share a passion for soft matter research and conduct experiments at ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron. Their research questions relate to structural ordering in soft matter and its relevance in applications such as food, personal care products, biomaterials and pharmaceuticals.

In their #LightSourceSelfie, Marta, Sarah and Stephanie discuss what attracted them to this area of research, how they felt the first time they conducted experiments at the Australian Synchrotron, the support they receive from the team based at the facility, their top tips for surviving night shifts and how their research will benefit from the new BioSAX beamline, which is part of the synchrotron’s major upgrade. When it came to single words to describe their research, they agreed on “Challenging, unpredictable and super rewarding!”