A stereochemically driven supramolecular polymerization
Anthracyclines self-assemble in water into dimers. In the presence of sufficiently high salt (NaCl) concentrations, solutions of the antibiotic doxorubicin, but not those of the closely related molecules daunomycin and epirubicin, turn into gels barely compatible with the presence of small oligomers. The use of spectroscopic, scattering, imaging and computational techniques, allowed light to be shed on the self-assembly process that triggered doxorubicin gelification.