Emerging extracellular vesicle-based carriers for glioblastoma diagnosis and therapy.

Glioblastoma (GBM) treatment is still a big clinical challenge because of its highly malignant, invasive, and lethal characteristics. After treatment with the conventional therapeutic paradigm of surgery combined with radio- and chemotherapy, patients bearing GBMs generally exhibit a poor prognosis, with high mortality and a high disability rate. The main reason is the existence of the formidable blood-brain barrier (BBB), aggressive growth, and the infiltration nature of GBMs. Especially, the BBB suppresses the delivery of imaging and therapeutic agents to lesion sites, and thus this leads to difficulties in achieving a timely diagnosis and treatment. Recent studies have demonstrated that extracellular vesicles (EVs) exhibit favorable merits including good biocompatibility, a strong drug loading capacity, long circulation time, good BBB crossing efficiency, specific targeting to lesion sites, and high efficiency in the delivery of a variety of cargos for GBM therapy. Importantly, EVs inherit physiological and pathological molecules from the source cells, which are ideal biomarkers for molecularly tracking the malignant progression of GBMs. Herein, we start by introducing the pathophysiology and physiology of GBMs, followed by presenting the biological functions of EVs in GBMs with a special focus on their role as biomarkers for GBM diagnosis and as messengers in the modulation of the GBM microenvironment. Furthermore, we provide an update on the recent progress of using EVs in biology, functionality, and isolation applications. More importantly, we systematically summarize the most recent advances of EV-based carriers for GBM therapy by delivering different drugs including gene/RNA-based drugs, chemotherapy drugs, imaging agents, and combinatory drugs. Lastly, we point out the challenges and prospects of future research on EVs for diagnosing and treating GBMs. We hope this review will stimulate interest from researchers with different backgrounds and expedite the progress of GBM treatment paradigms.

Copper-catalyzed cross-coupling of vinyliodonium salts and diboron reagents to generate alkenyl boronic esters.

An efficient approach for the synthesis of alkenyl boronic esters through the copper-catalyzed cross-coupling of vinyliodonium salts and diboron reagents is reported. This method is distinguished by its mild conditions and short reaction time of less than 30 min, which should provide an additional way for the construction of alkenyl boronic esters.

Correction: Metal- and additive-free oxygen-atom transfer reaction: an efficient and chemoselective oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides with cyclic diacyl peroxides.

Correction for 'Metal- and additive-free oxygen-atom transfer reaction: an efficient and chemoselective oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides with cyclic diacyl peroxides' by Shaoyan Gan et al., Org. Biomol. Chem., 2017, 15, 2647-2654.

Metal- and additive-free oxygen-atom transfer reaction: an efficient and chemoselective oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides with cyclic diacyl peroxides.

Metal- and additive-free oxidation of a series of sulfides/thioketones has been achieved using cyclic diacyl peroxides as mild oxygen sources. This protocol features simple manipulation, high chemo- and diastereoselectivity, and a broad substrate scope (up to 42 examples), tolerates many common functional groups, and is scalable and applicable to the late-stage sulfoxidation strategy. A preliminary mechanistic study by quantum mechanical calculations suggests that a single two-electron transfer process is energetically more favorable, and indicates the reactivity of cyclic diacyl peroxides distinct from conventional acyclic acyl peroxides.