Synthetic anion transporters that facilitate chloride transport are promising candidates for channelopathy treatments. However, most anion transporters exhibit an undesired side effect of facilitating proton transport via interacting with fatty acids present in the membrane. To address the limitation, we here report the use of a new tetrapodal scaffold to maximize the selective interaction with spherical chloride over binding the carboxylate headgroup of fatty acids. One of the new transporters demonstrated a high selectivity for chloride uniport over fatty acid-induced proton transport while being >10 times more active in chloride uniport than strapped calixpyrroles that were previously the only class of compounds known to possess similar selectivity properties.
Keywords: anion transport; anion-selective transport; lipid bilayer; supramolecular chemistry.