Blood-Brain Barrier Penetrating Luminescent Conjugates Based on Cyclometalated Platinum(II) Complexes

Platinum Stabilises a Molten-Globule Conformation of a Small Globular Cytosolic Protein SUMO1

Proteins are generally resistant to large conformational changes under physiological conditions. Here, we show that platinum (Pt(II)), which is widely-used metal centre in cancer therapeutic drugs, binds to a cytosolic protein, small ubiquitin-like modifier 1 (SUMO1), under physiological conditions and changes its conformation to a molten globule (MG). Mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) studies confirmed stoichiometric Pt(II) binding to SUMO1. Fluorescence spectroscopy showed Tyr fluorescence quenching and increased ANS binding. Fluorescence assays on Trp-mutants indicated conformational changes and circular dichroism (CD) suggested MG formation upon Pt(II) binding. In contrast, structural homologues of SUMO1 (ubiquitin (Ubq) and SUMO2) showed no conformational changes on Pt(II) titration. Further studies compared the impact of distinct His residues in SUMO1 on Pt(II) binding and protein structure to SUMO2 and Ubq. Experiments at low pH (5.0) implicated His residues interacting with Pt(II), corroborated by the absence of conformational change in the H75L mutant of SUMO1. Pt(II)-His binding in SUMO1 unravels key molecular determinants of Pt(II)-protein interactions and their conformational consequences. SUMO1 with other SUMOylation components are shown to have enhanced expression in several cancers, hence, our study suggests a possible fate of the non-targetability of Pt(II)-based drugs on SUMOylation in cancer cells, upon interaction with SUMO1.

Phosphorescent Chiral Cationic Binuclear Iridium(III) Complexes: Boosting the Circularly Polarized Luminescence Brightness

We report the synthesis and characterization of two chiral binuclear iridium(III) complexes (ΛΛ and ΔΔ) prepared from enantiopure building blocks [μ-Cl2(Δ-Ir(C^N)2)2] and [μ-Cl2(Λ-Ir(C^N)2)2]. These building blocks have been obtained by chiral preparative high-performance liquid chromatography of the neutral iridium(III) complex Irpiv (piv = 2,2,6,6-tetramethylheptane-3,5-dionate) followed by selective degradation of the ancillary ligand. For comparison purposes, we also synthesized a monomer (IrL1) and a dimer (Ir2L2, mixture). All the complexes exhibit similar emission properties, emitting in the orange-red region of the spectra with a good photoluminescence quantum yield (λmax = 610-625 nm, Φ ∼ 25%, τ ∼ 800-900 ns). However, the ΛΛ and ΔΔ complexes are optically active, indicating that no isomerization occurred during the different synthetic steps, as evidenced by both the circular dichroism spectra and their circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). The capital gain of the dimers (Ir2L2, ΛΛ, and ΔΔ) is a 4-fold brightness (B380 = ε380 nm × Φ) compared to the monomer (IrL1) and the CPL brightness (BCPL = B380 × glum/2) of the binuclear complexes being among the highest reported to date for chiral iridium(III) complexes.

Shining New Light on Biological Systems: Luminescent Transition Metal Complexes for Bioimaging and Biosensing Applications

Luminescence imaging is a powerful and versatile technique for investigating cell physiology and pathology in living systems, making significant contributions to life science research and clinical diagnosis. In recent years, luminescent transition metal complexes have gained significant attention for diagnostic and therapeutic applications due to their unique photophysical and photochemical properties. In this Review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the recent development of luminescent transition metal complexes for bioimaging and biosensing applications, with a focus on transition metal centers with a d6, d8, and d10 electronic configuration. We elucidate the structure-property relationships of luminescent transition metal complexes, exploring how their structural characteristics can be manipulated to control their biological behavior such as cellular uptake, localization, biocompatibility, pharmacokinetics, and biodistribution. Furthermore, we introduce the various design strategies that leverage the interesting photophysical properties of luminescent transition metal complexes for a wide variety of biological applications, including autofluorescence-free imaging, multimodal imaging, organelle imaging, biological sensing, microenvironment monitoring, bioorthogonal labeling, bacterial imaging, and cell viability assessment. Finally, we provide insights into the challenges and perspectives of luminescent transition metal complexes for bioimaging and biosensing applications, as well as their use in disease diagnosis and treatment evaluation.

Detection and disaggregation of amyloid fibrils by luminescent amphiphilic platinum(II) complexes

Cyclometallated Pt(II) complexes possessing hydrophobic 2-phenylpyridine (ppy) ligands and hydrophilic acetonylacetone (acac) ligands have been investigated for their ability to detect amyloid fibrils via luminescence response. Using hen egg-white lysozyme (HEWL) as a model amyloid protein, Pt(II) complexes featuring benzanilide-substituted ppy ligands and ethylene glycol-functionalized acac ligands demonstrated enhanced luminescence in the presence of HEWL fibrils, whereas Pt(II) complexes lacking complementary hydrophobic/hydrophilic ligand sets displayed little to no emission enhancement. An amphiphilic Pt(II) complex incorporating a bis(ethylene glycol)-derivatized acac ligand was additionally found to trigger restructuring of HEWL fibrils into smaller spherical aggregates. Amphiphilic Pt(II) complexes were generally non-toxic to SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells, and several complexes also exhibited enhanced luminescence in the presence of Aβ42 fibrils associated with Alzheimer's disease. This study demonstrates that easily prepared and robust (ppy)PtII(acac) complexes show promising reactivity toward amyloid fibrils and represent attractive molecular scaffolds for design of small-molecule probes targeting amyloid assemblies.

Luminescent Metal Complexes for Bioassays in the Near-Infrared (NIR) Region

Near-infrared (NIR, 700-1700 nm) luminescent imaging is an emerging bioimaging technology with low photon scattering, minimal autofluorescence, deep tissue penetration, and high spatiotemporal resolution that has shown fascinating promise for NIR imaging-guided theranostics. In recent progress, NIR luminescent metal complexes have attracted substantially increased research attention owing to their intrinsic merits, including small size, anti-photobleaching, long lifetime, and metal-centered NIR emission. In the past decade, scientists have contributed to the advancement of NIR metal complexes involving efforts to improve photophysical properties, biocompatibility, specificity, pharmacokinetics, in vivo visualization, and attempts to exploit new ligand platforms. Herein, we summarize recent progress and provide future perspectives for NIR metal complexes, including d-block transition metals and f-block lanthanides (Ln) as NIR optical molecular probes for bioassays.

Metal Peptide Conjugates in Cell and Tissue Imaging and Biosensing

Metal complex luminophores have seen dramatic expansion in application as imaging probes over the past decade. This has been enabled by growing understanding of methods to promote their cell permeation and intracellular targeting. Amongst the successful approaches that have been applied in this regard is peptide-facilitated delivery. Cell-permeating or signal peptides can be readily conjugated to metal complex luminophores and have shown excellent response in carrying such cargo through the cell membrane. In this article, we describe the rationale behind applying metal complexes as probes and sensors in cell imaging and outline the advantages to be gained by applying peptides as the carrier for complex luminophores. We describe some of the progress that has been made in applying peptides in metal complex peptide-driven conjugates as a strategy for cell permeation and targeting of transition metal luminophores. Finally, we provide key examples of their application and outline areas for future progress.

Bis-Heteroleptic Cationic Iridium(III) Complexes Featuring Cyclometalating 2-Phenylbenzimidazole Ligands: A Combined Experimental and Theoretical Study

In this report, we investigate a new family of cationic iridium(III) complexes featuring the cyclometalating ligand 2-phenylbenzimidazole and ancillary ligand 4,4'-dimethyl-2,2'-bipyridine. Our benchmark complex IrL¹₂ (L¹ = 2-phenylbenzimidazole) displays emission properties similar to those of the archetypical complex 2,2'-dipyridylbis(2',4'-phenylpyridine)iridium(III) in deaerated CH₃CN (Φ = 0.20, λ_em = 584 nm and Φ = 0.14, λ_em = 585 nm, respectively) but exhibits a higher photoluminescence quantum yield in deaerated CH₂Cl₂ (Φ = 0.32, λ_em = 566 nm and Φ = 0.20, λ_em = 595 nm, respectively) and especially a lower nonradiative constant (k_nr = 6.6 × 10⁵ s^-1 vs k_nr = 1.4 × 10⁶ s^-1, respectively). As a primary investigation, we explored the influence of the introduction of electron-donating and electron-withdrawing groups on the benzimidazole moiety and the synergetic effect of the substitution of the cyclometalating phenyl moiety at the para position with the same substituents. The emission energy displays very good correlation with the Hammett constants of the introduced substituents as well as with ΔE_redox values, which allow us to ascribe the phosphorescence of these series to emanate mainly from a mixed metal/ligand to ligand charge transfer triplet excited state (³M/LLCT*). Two complexes (IrL⁵₂ and IrL⁸₂) display a switch of the lowest triplet excited state from ³M/LLCT* to ligand centered (³LC*), from the less polar CH₂Cl₂ to the more polar CH₃CN. The observed results are supported by (TD)-DFT computations considering the vibrational contributions to the electronic transitions. Chromaticity diagrams based on the maximum emission wavelength of the recorded and simulated phosphorescence spectra demonstrate the strong promise of our complexes as emitting materials, together with the very good agreement between experimental and theoretical results.

Phosphorescent NIR emitters for biomedicine: applications, advances and challenges

Application of NIR (near-infrared) emitting transition metal complexes in biomedicine is a rapidly developing area of research. Emission of this class of compounds in the "optical transparency windows" of biological tissues and the intrinsic sensitivity of their phosphorescence to oxygen resulted in the preparation of several commercial oxygen sensors capable of deep (up to whole-body) and quantitative mapping of oxygen gradients suitable for in vivo experimental studies. In addition to this achievement, the last decade has also witnessed the increased growth of successful alternative applications of NIR phosphors that include (i) site-specific in vitro and in vivo visualization of sophisticated biological models ranging from 3D cell cultures to intact animals; (ii) sensing of various biologically relevant analytes, such as pH, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, RedOx agents, etc.; (iii) and several therapeutic applications such as photodynamic (PDT), photothermal (PTT), and photoactivated cancer (PACT) therapies as well as their combinations with other therapeutic and imaging modalities to yield new variants of combined therapies and theranostics. Nevertheless, emerging applications of these compounds in experimental biomedicine and their implementation as therapeutic agents practically applicable in PDT, PTT, and PACT face challenges related to a critically important improvement of their photophysical and physico-chemical characteristics. This review outlines the current state of the art and achievements of the last decade and stresses the most promising trends, major development prospects, and challenges in the design of NIR phosphors suitable for biomedical applications.

In Vitro Anticancer Activity of Nanoformulated Mono- and Di-nuclear Pt Compounds

Nanoformulations of mononuclear Pt complexes cis-PtCl₂ (PPh₃ )₂ (1), [Pt(PPh₃ )₂ (L-Cys)] ⋅ H₂ O (3, L-Cys=L-cysteinate), trans-PtCl₂ (PPh₂ PhNMe₂ )₂ (4; PPh₂ PhNMe₂ =4-(dimethylamine)triphenylphosphine), trans-PtI₂ (PPh₂ PhNMe₂ )₂ (5) and dinuclear Pt cluster Pt₂ (μ-S)₂ (PPh₃ )₄ (2) have comparable cytotoxicity to cisplatin against murine melanoma cell line B16F10. Masking of these discrete molecular entities within the hydrophobic core of Pluronic® F-127 significantly boosted their solubility and stability, ensuring efficient cellular uptake, giving in vitro IC₅₀ values in the range of 0.87-11.23 μM. These results highlight the potential therapeutic value of Pt complexes featuring stable Pt-P bonds in nanocomposite formulations with biocompatible amphiphilic polymers.