Martínez González, RaquelCarrillo Carrión, CarolinaDestito, PaoloÁlvarez Lorenzo, AitorTomás Gamasa, MaríaPelaz García, BeatrizLópez García, FernandoMascareñas Cid, José LuisPino González de la Higuera, Pablo Alfonso del2020-07-232020-07-232020Martínez et al., Cell Reports Physical Science 1, 1000762666-3864http://hdl.handle.net/10347/23205Translating the potential of transition metal catalysis to biological and living environments promises to have a profound impact in chemical biology and biomedicine. A major challenge in the field is the creation of metal-based catalysts that remain active over time. Here, we demonstrate that embedding a reactive metallic core within a microporous metal-organic framework-based cloak preserves the catalytic site from passivation and deactivation, while allowing a suitable diffusion of the reactants. Specifically, we report the fabrication of nanoreactors composed of a palladium nanocube core and a nanometric imidazolate framework, which behave as robust, long-lasting nanoreactors capable of removing propargylic groups from phenol-derived pro-fluorophores in biological milieu and inside living cells. These heterogeneous catalysts can be reused within the same cells, promoting the chemical transformation of recurrent batches of reactants. We also report the assembly of tissue-like 3D spheroids containing the nanoreactors and demonstrate that they can perform the reactions in a repeated mannereng© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Bioorthogonal chemistryCore-shell nanocompositeNanoreactorPalladiumZIF-8MOFIntracellular catalysisBiocompatible organometallic catalystCatalytic spheroidDiffusion-controlled reactionjournal article10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100076open access