Metal Complexes; Metal Bioconjugates; Inorganic Chemical Biology; Caged Compounds; Photo-release; Bioorganometallic Chemistry; Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry
Kitanovic I., Can S., Alborzinia H., Kitanovic A., Pierroz V., Leonidova A., Pinto A., Molteni R., Spingler B., Ferrari S., Steffen A., Metzler-Nolte N., Wölfl S., Gasser G. (2014), A Deadly Organometallic Luminescent Probe: Anticancer Activity of a Re(I) Bisquinoline Complex, in
Chem. Eur. J., 20, 2496-2507.
Leonidova A., Pierroz V., Adams L., Borlow N., Ferrari S., Graham B., Gasser G. (2014), Enhanced Cytotoxicity through Conjugation of a “Clickable” Luminescent Re(I) Complex to a Cell-Penetrating Lipopeptide, in
ACS Med. Chem. Lett., 5, 809-814.
Leonidova A., Pierroz V., Rubbiani R., Lan Y., Schmitz A.G., Kaech A., Sigel R.K.O., Ferrari S., Gasser G. (2014), Photo-Induced Uncaging of a Specific Re(I) Organometallic Complex in Living Cells, in
Chem. Sci., 5, 4044-4056.
Leonidova A., Pierroz V., Rubbiani R., Heier J., Ferrari S., Gasser G. (2014), Towards Cancer Cell-Specific Phototoxic Organometallic Rhenium(I) Complexes, in
Dalton Trans., 43, 4287-4294.
Leonidova A., Joshi T., Nipkow D., Frei A., Penner J.-E., Konatschnig S., Patra M, Gasser G. (2013), An Environmentally Benign and Cost-Effective Synthesis of Aminoferrocene and Aminoruthenocene, in
Organometallics, 32, 2037-2040.
Patra M., Ingram K., Leonidova A., Pierroz V., Ferrari S., Robertson M., Todd M.H., Keiser J., Gasser G. (2013), In Vivo Antischistosomal Activity Studies and In Vitro Metabolic Profile of (, in
J. Med. Chem., 56, 9192-9198.
The main focus of our research group at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Zurich is currently to use light as an external trigger to specifically release metal complexes of biological and medicinal relevance in living cells. We aim to give new tools in the field of chemical biology by enabling a spatial and temporal release of metal compounds in living cells. For this purpose, we are preparing metal-containing bioconjugates which hold biologically or medicinally relevant metal complexes. The latter have been rendered inactive by a chemical coupling to a photolabile protecting group (PLPG) to form so-called metal-caged compounds. Importantly, our metal-caged compounds are also linked to a biomolecule (e.g. specific cellular transporter, localisation signal, etc...) in order to enable an accurate delivery of the metal complexes to distinct cells or cellular organelles. Upon light activation, the metal complexes are then liberated and undertake a specific function within the cell such as cytotoxicity, enzyme inhibition, etc…Anna Leonidova, who was the first PhD student in our group, pioneered this research and obtained very promising preliminary results during the first two years of her PhD thesis. She successfully achieved, to the best of our knowledge, the first release of two specific metal complexes, namely aminoferrocene and a Re tricarbonyl derivative, in living cells. She is currently assessing the biological and medicinal potentials of the release. In this proposal, we present the research to be undertaken by Anna Leonidova to finish up this project and hence complete her dissertation. We are expecting that several publications could be published if a one-year extension to this SNSF project was granted.