Do you suffer from osteoarthritis? Do your parents suffer from it? Osteoarthritis is the most common degenerative disease of the joints. Despite many reports, osteoarthritis is not entirely understood, and there is no yet an effective treatment available for this disease. To satisfy this unmet medical need, drug delivery systems containing disease-modifying osteoarthritis molecules for intra-articular administration are required to improve the health of patients. Drug delivery systems should provide controlled and sustained drug release, enabling long-term treatment with a reduced number of injections. This presentation will introduce a promising way of reconstituting the cartilage by means of microparticles releasing locally novel molecules. A new way of improving the mobility and relieve pain will also be presented. Biopolymers may be synthetically modified to form nanomedicines in order to reach these objectives.

Leishmaniosis is a neglected tropical disease, an illness that kills up to 30,000 people yearly. Existing drugs have serious drawbacks in terms of safety, resistance, stability, difficulty of administration and cost. Thus, there is a need for new treatments.

Within the framework of an Open Synthesis Network (OSN) between the University of Geneva and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), we aimed at synthetizing new aminopyrazole analogues for early stage discovery for new treatments for leishmaniosis. The two key reactions are reductive amination, during which a first structural diversification occurs and the last coupling by amidation that led to the final expected compounds. Compounds biological activity has been assessed on Leishmania infantum and cytotoxicity on human and murine fibroblasts. The synthesis, SAR and biological activity will be discussed.

The open source nature of this project aimed at deepening the learning of laboratory work in the context of students R&D practical work. The collaborative spirit of the students has led to the successful synthesis output and the development of a scientific rigor of work, which includes the preparation and the follow-up plans of experiment.

Food constituents, with their peculiar quali-quantitative distribution, delineate a characteristic chemical fingerprint which encrypts comprehensive information on nutritional properties, sensory attributes, quality, authenticity and safety. Food metabolomics and sensomics, approach this intriguing matter by combining multi-dimensional analysis with advanced data processing strategies validating the functional relationships between sample chemical dimensions and its qualities.

High quality hazelnuts (Corylus avellana L.) are here presented as challenging test bench for multidimensional investigations while trajectories from Academic research to industry applications will be discussed as virtuous interaction to achieve a modern concept of food quality.

Owing to applications in the sensing of toxic anions such as F– and CN– or in the transport of biologically relevant anions such as Cl–, the development of anion receptors that operate in aqueous media is drawing considerable attention. As part of our contribution to this research, we have designed a series of main group compounds which are sufficiently Lewis acidic to complex anions in water. We have shown that the Lewis acidity of these derivatives can be controlled by the nature of the central main group element employed, the overall charge of compounds and their ability to embrace the anionic guest through the involvement of multiple Lewis acids. While our earlier work focused on the use of boron as a Lewis acidic element, the most recent systems emanating from our efforts all contain heavy group 15 elements, in particular, antimony. We will demonstrate the potential that our approach holds in the areas of anion fluorescence turn - on sensing, chelation, and transport through artificial membranes.

L'azote est un nutriment essentiel pour toutes les plantes, y compris la vigne. La gestion de l'azote au vignoble a un effet important sur la qualité des vins. Une alimentation excessive ou insuffisante peut avoir des conséquences négatives.

Comment l'alimentation azotée influence la composition du vin ? Est-ce qu'il y a des marqueurs chimiques dans les vins liés à la carence en azote de la vigne ? Comment trouver ces marqueurs ?

Ces questions seront traitées dans cette présentation avec l'appui d'exemples buvables.

In this lecture, several transition metal-catalyzed isomerizations will be presented. Emphasis will be placed on various aspects of selective catalysis for a series of short and long-range refunctionalization processes.