To face SARS-CoV-2 pandemic various attempts are made to identify potential effective treatments by repurposing available drugs. Among them, indomethacin, an anti-inflammatory drug, was shown to have potent in-vitro antiviral properties on human SARS-CoV-1, canine CCoV, and more recently on human SARS-CoV-2 at low micromolar range. Our objective was to show that indomethacin could be considered as a promising candidate for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and to provide criteria for comparing benefits of alternative dosage regimens using a model-based approach. A multi-stage model-based approach was developed to characterize % of recovery and viral load in CCoVinfected dogs, to estimate the PK of indomethacin in dog and human using published data after administration of immediate (IR) and sustained-release (SR) formulations, and to estimate the expected antiviral activity as a function of different assumptions on the effective exposure in human. Different dosage regimens were evaluated for IR formulation (25 mg and 50 mg three-times-a-day, and 25 mg four-times-a-day), and SR formulation (75 mg once and twice-a-day). The best performing dosing regimens were: 50 mg three-times-a-day for the IR formulation, and 75 mg twice-a-day for the SR formulation. The treatment with the SR formulation at the dose of 75 mg twice-a-day is expected to achieve a complete response in three days for the treatment in patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. These results suggest that indomethacin could be considered as a promising candidate for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 whose potential therapeutic effect needs to be further assessed in a prospective clinical trial.

Self-assembly of trimesic acid (TMA) displayed remarkable abundance over its full coverage range on gold under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Experiments showed that previously well-reported “chicken wire” and “flower” structures were actually two special cases within its full coverage. All observed assembling structures formed hexagonal porous networks that could be well-described by a unified model in which the TMA molecules inside the half unit cells (equilateral triangles) were bound via trimeric hydrogen bonds and all half unit cells were connected to each other via dimeric hydrogen bonds. These porous networks possessed pores of 1.1 ± 0.1 nm in diameter, and the interpore distance was tunable from 1.6 nm on at a step size of ∼0.93 nm. Energetics analysis unveiled that the assembling structures less than one molecular layer was optimally driven by maximization of the dimeric hydrogen bonds.

Direct synthesis of light olefins from syngas (STO) using a bifunctional catalyst composed of oxide and zeolite has attracted extensive attention in both academia and industry. It is highly desirable to develop robust catalysts that could enhance the CO conversion while simultaneously maintain high selectivity to C2-C4 olefins. Herein, we report a bifunctional catalyst consisting of ZnCr binary oxide (ZnCrOx) and low-Si AlPO-18 zeolite, showing both satisfying selectivity to C2-C4 olefins of 45.0% (86.7%, CO2 free) and high olefin/paraffin ratio of 29.9 at the CO conversion of 25.2% under mild reaction conditions (4.0 MPa, 390 °C). By optimizing the reaction conditions, the CO conversion could be markedly increased to 49.3% with a slight drop in selectivity. CD3CN/CO-FTIR characterizations and theoretical calculations demonstrate that low-Si AlPO-18 zeolite has lower acid strength, and is therefore less reactive toward the hydride transfer in the STO reaction, leading to a higher olefin/paraffin ratio.

Metal nanoclusters (Au, Pt, Pd, Cu) encapsulated in channels of mesoporous ceria (mp-CeO(2)) were synthesized. The activation energies of water-gas shift (WGS) reaction performed at oxide-metal interfaces of metal nanoclusters encapsulated in mp-CeO(2) (M@mp-CeO(2)) are lower than those of metal nanoclusters impregnated on ceria nanorods (M/rod-CeO(2)). In situ studies using ambient-pressure XPS (AP-XPS) suggested that the surface chemistry of the internal concave surface of CeO(2) pores of M@mp-CeO(2) is different from that of external surfaces of CeO(2) of M/rod-CeO(2) under reaction conditions. AP-XPS identified the metallic state of the metal nanoclusters of these WGS catalysts (M@mp-CeO(2) and M/rod-CeO(2)) under a WGS reaction condition. The lower activation energy of M@mp-CeO(2) in contrast to M/rod-CeO(2) is related to the different surface chemistry of the two types of CeO(2) under the same reaction condition.