Chemistry in Pictures: Fluorescent filtration

This silica plug glows green thanks to the fluorescent molecule that Anna Poryvai was filtering. Similar to a silica column, a silica plug—basically just a short, stout column of silica in a fritted funnel—enables chemists to quickly separate impurities from a reaction mixture. In this case, Poryvai—a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL)—was synthesizing a fluorescent photocage molecule, a compound that falls apart into smaller molecules when it’s hit with certain wavelengths of light. One goal of the research is to make photocage molecules that break up and release drugs when irradiated. These photocages could be given to a person with, say, cancer so that when a doctor applies light to just the cancerous part of the person’s body, the photocage breaks down and delivers the drug molecule to the right place.

Submitted by Anna Poryvai

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