Organoselenium Compounds as Phytochemicals from the Natural Kingdom.

Selenium is naturally present in soils but it is also produced by pollution from human activities into the environment. Its incorporation into plants affords organoselenium metabolites that, depending on the nature of the molecules and the plant species, can be incorporated into proteins, stored or eliminated by volatilization. The possibility to use the selenium metabolism of some plants as a method for bioremediation and, at the main time, as a source of selenated phytochemicals is here discussed taking into consideration the growing interest in organic selenium derivatives as new potential therapeutic agents

<strong>Explorative application of selenium catalysts in the oxidation of benzyl alcohol.</strong>

Oxidation mediated by hydrogen peroxide needs to be accelerate by approrpiate catalyst in order to be completed in a reasonable reaction time. As a part of our investigation in the use of organoselenium cataysts in bio-mimetic oxidative protocol we reported here some preliminary results on the oxidation of benzyl alcohol into the corresponding benzoic acid

An easy synthetic access to new pyrazole spiro derivatives from 3-amino-1-phenyl-2-pyrazolin-5-one

Pyrazole and pyrazolone moieties have shown important biological activities. For this reason, the synthesis of new derivatives has attracted interest from the scientific community. Herein we report the formation of two unexpected spiro compounds containing pyrazole moieties using a tandem process involving the initial condensation of 3-amino-1-phenyl-2-pyrazolin-5-one with benzaldehyde followed by dimerization