NEWS OF THE WEEK BUSINESS
DOW REARRANGES A KEY PORTFOLIO A change in strategy will see 'market-facing' businesses dispersed
D
OW CHEMICAL IS CHANGING
the way it approaches its "market-facing" portfolio, a family of high-value, end-marketoriented businesses that the company considers key to its future growth. In conjunction with the retirement of Ed F. Gambrell, 59, president of the market-facing businesses group, Dow is disbanding the portfolio and giving responsibility to other senior executives. Dow Automotive, the largest of the market-facing units, with
about $1 billion in annual sales, will become part of DoVs thermosets business, headed by Robert L. Wood. The market-facing advanced electronic materials unit, which includes SiLK semiconductor resins and Lumation polymeric light-emitting diodes, will fall under David E. Kepler, DoVs chief information officer and vice president for e-business. Richard M. Gross, vice president for R&D, will assume responsibility for the new business activities now under Gambrell.
These include industrial biotechnology, pharmaceutical technologies, Dow's new business growth board, and its biotechnology steering committee. A year ago, Gambrell told C&EN that the market-facing businesses were grouped together to nurture capabilities distinct from those needed to run Dow's core commodity businesses (C&EN, June 18,2001, page 21). Today, though, company representatives say many of the market-facing business are better established and will benefit from ties to Dow's traditional "assetbased" businesses. Dow Automotive, for example, is a big consumer of polyurethanes made by Wood's thermosets business. And in the case of new business development efforts, Dow expects the shift to Gross's leadership to improve synergy with R&D—
Wood
MICHAEL MCCOY
Gross
SENSORS
by the aromatic acid when it displaces the labile metal-bound water molecules. "Prior to recognition, the chemosensors are 'photophysicall·/ silent since no light is emitted until they bind with the acid," Gunnlaugsson explains. "Our systems emit signals well after fluorescence of the surrounding biological environment has occurred. P. Leonard at Trinity College There is therefore no pollution Dublin, and X-ray crystallogra- from fluorescent moieties in the pher Mark Nieuwenhuyzen at human body such as proteins." The group is now trying to imQueen's University of Belfast [Chem. Commun., 2002,2134}. prove the sensor's sensitivity and "Our terbium(III)-based develop the systems for other chemosensor selectively recog- drugs.-MICHAEL FREEMANTLE nizes salicylic acid under mimicked physiological conditions," GunnDISPLACEABLE laugsson says. "The acid is the acTwo water tive painkiller that is formed in molecules occupy the stomach by the hydrolysis of vacant coordination its acetate ester—the prodrug assites of terbiumUll) pirin. The chemosensor does not complex. These bind to the ester and therefore dissupramolecular H3C^ N criminates between the active and systems are administered forms of the drug." kinetically and CH The complex's sensing action thermodynamicalty results from the enhanced sensiH3C stable. tization of the ion's excited state
SALICYLIC ACID RECOGNITION
Lanthanide luminescent sensor detects active form of aspirin
S
UPRAMOLECULAR SYSTEMS
based on terbium(III) complexes bind and recognize aromatic carboxylic acids, including salicylic acid, in water, chemists in Ireland and Northern Ireland have shown. The chemists observed that terbium(III) complexes of a tetraazacyclodecane possessing two labile water molecules bound to the lanthanide atom give rise to large enhancements in lanthanide luminescence when the lanthanide atom chelates to aromatic carboxylic anions. The work was done by organic chemistry lecturer Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson and graduate students AndrewJ. Harte andJoseph HTTP://PUBS.ACS.ORG/CEN
C&EN
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