Editorial [Hot Topic: Supramolecular Devices for the High-Throughput Screening of Drugs, Nutrients and Metabolites in Postgenomic Era (Part 1) (Guest Editor: Grzegorz Bazylak)]

One of the high impact events to celebrate during 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first supramolecular chemistry paper (Pedersen, C.J. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1967, 89, 2495-2496) and its coincidence with the 20th anniversary of the Nobel Prize recognizing the pioneers in this field, namely, Charles J. Pedersen (1904-1989), Donald J. Cram (1919-2001) and Jean-Marie Lehn (1939). The vigorous and impressive development of various supramolecular concepts since then has enabled the fashionable ‘nano’ boom of today and the current global investment in nanotechnology-based industry. Indeed, the basic supramolecular chemistry concept combined with the possibility to recognize, control and manipulate molecular information is still seminal and by dynamic exploration of the structure-energy hypersurface would lead to construction, testing and, quite soon, large-scale production of light driven autonomous artificial molecular machines and/or their natural-artificial hybrids for clinical analysis, drug delivery and more sophisticated therapeutic treatment related to tissue modification and engineering. Before this optimistic view will be realized, the supramolecular dynamics approach should enable construction of a range of high throughput screening (HTS) devices, arrays and robotics for systematic assay of vast amounts of synthetic and natural compounds to find candidates with desirable bioactive properties. Some of these HTS concepts will soon evolve to more complicated HTS machines enabling a fast, reproducible and high content screening of variable dynamic self-recognition, selforganization and self-optimization nanoscale phenomena leading to molecular and supramolecular diversity, activity and reproduction of interacting entities, e.g., receptors and drugs. Examples of such solutions from HTS progress will be illustrated in a three part special issue of Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening entitled, Supramolecular devices for the high-throughput screening of drugs, nutrients and metabolites in postgenomic era, which commemorates the excellence of the scientific work, sophisticated achievements and vision of the noble supramolecular chemistry founders. Part 1, presented in the current issue, includes papers related to HTS that concern chiral and molecular recognition properties of synthetic and natural small molecules, as drug-like candidates or real metabolites and their macrocyclic nano-carriers. These considerations are discussed in the review paper by Schug which describes the current status and future prospects of electrospray ionization mass spectrometry that is enabling solution phase multiplexed HTS of nanosized samples of chiral analytes and quantitative characteristics of non-covalent enantiomeric discrimination and recognition processes observed in thousands of self-assembling and binding drug-carrier or drug-target systems. In addition, the minireview paper by Mangelings and Vander Heyden describes the recent advances in construction and use of microfluidic and microchip supramolecular devices employed in various chromatographic modes for the high resolution and accelerated HTS of minute amounts of drug enantiomers and labeled small molecule building blocks in time of miliseconds. Similarly, the review paper by Ali presents some in vitro and in vivo urgent needs and challenges related to homochiral drug design, selection, development, therapeutic application, and side effects monitoring, thus implying the importance of implementating dedicated, miniaturized, and high content HTS procedures for such these emerging studies. One approach to solving these problems is modification of the pharmacological properties of homochiral drugs by the use of macrocyclic compounds as drug nano-carriers and prodrug nano-scaffolds. This approach is elaborated in the mini-review paper by Cheng et al., describing the covalent and cleavable conjugation of various drugs to the surface of dendrimers followed by their modification, molecular tuning and nanopatterning to fit highly specific therapeutic demands.....