Although cyclometalated IrIII complexes have emerged as promising photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy, some key drawbacks still hamper clinical translation, such as operability in the phototherapeutic window and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production efficiency and selectivity. In this work, a cyclometalated IrIII complex conjugated to a far‐red‐emitting coumarin, IrIII–COUPY, is reported with highly favourable properties for cancer phototherapy. IrIII–COUPY was efficiently taken up by HeLa cells and showed no dark cytotoxicity and impressive photocytotoxicity indexes after irradiation with green and blue light, even under hypoxia. Importantly, a clear correlation between cell death and intracellular generation of superoxide anion radicals after visible light irradiation was demonstrated. This strategy opens the door to novel fluorescent photodynamic therapy agents with promising applications in theragnosis.

Among the palette of previously described fluorescent organic molecules, coumarins are ideal candidates for developing cellular and molecular imaging tools due to their high cell permeability and minimal perturbation of living systems. However, blue-to-cyan fluorescence emission is usually difficult in in vivo applications due to the inherent toxicity and poor tissue penetration of short visible light wavelengths. Here, we introduce a new family of coumarin-based fluorophores, nicknamed COUPY, with promising photophysical properties, including emission in the far-red/near-infrared (NIR) region, large Stokes shifts, high photostability, and excellent brightness. COUPY fluorophores were efficiently synthesized in only three linear synthetic steps from commercially available precursors, with the N-alkylation of a pyridine moiety being the key step at the end of the synthetic route, as it allows for the tuning of the photophysical properties of the resulting dye. Owing to their low molecular weights, COUPY dyes show excellent cell permeability and accumulate selectively in nucleoli and/or mitochondria of HeLa cells, as their far-red/NIR fluorescence emission is easily detected at a concentration as low as 0.5 μM after an incubation of only 20 min. We anticipate that these coumarin scaffolds will open a way to the development of novel coumarin-based far-red to NIR emitting fluorophores with potential applications for organelle imaging and biomolecule labeling.

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The synthesis and characterization of three propynyloxycoumarins are reported in this work together with the formation of three different series of gold(i) organometallic complexes. Neutral complexes are constituted by water soluble phosphines (PTA and DAPTA) which confer water solubility to them. The X-ray crystal structure of 7-(prop-2-in-1-yloxy)-1-benzopyran-2-one and its corresponding dialkynyl complex is also shown and the formation of rectangular dimers for the gold derivative in the solid state can be observed. A detailed analysis of the absorption and emission spectra of both ligands and complexes allows us to attribute the luminescent behaviour to the coumarin organic ligand. Moreover, the presence of the gold(i) metal atom seems to be responsible for an increase of coumarin phosphorescence emission. The biological activity of the complexes showed that the anionic complexes triggered strong cytotoxic effects in two different cell lines whereas the neutral gold alkynyl complexes led to lower effects against tumor cell growth. Thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) inhibition was very strong in the case of the neutral complexes (IC50 values below 0.1 μM) but moderate for the anionic complexes (IC50 values above 0.8 μM).

A new anticancer agent based on the conjugation of a photoactivatable Pt(IV) pro-drug to a cyclic RGD-containing peptide is described. Upon visible light irradiation, phototoxicity was induced preferentially in SK-MEL-28 melanoma cancer cells overexpressing αVβ3 integrin compared to control DU-145 human prostate carcinoma cells.