Exploiting Interactions between Polyoxometalates and Proteins for Applications in (Bio)chemistry and Medicine

Abstract

The specific interactions of anionic metal‐oxo clusters, known as polyoxometalates (POMs), with proteins can be leveraged for a wide range of analytical and biomedical applications. For example, POMs have been developed as selective catalysts that can induce protein modifications and have also been shown to facilitate protein crystallization, both of which are instrumental in the structural characterization of proteins. POMs can also be used for selective protein separation and enzyme inhibition, which makes them promising therapeutic agents. Hence, understanding POM‐protein interactions is essential for the development of POM‐based materials and their implementation in several fields. In this Review we summarize in detail the key insights that have been gained so far on POM‐protein interactions. Emphasis is also given to hybrid POMs functionalized with organic ligands to prompt further research in this direction owing to the promising recent results on tuning POM‐protein interactions through POM functionalization.

GSH/pH dual-activated POM@MOF for tumor cell-specific synergistic photothermal and chemodynamic therapy

“…Polyoxometalates (POMs) are a class of nanoscale inorganic polymetallic oxygen clusters that have a wide range of applications in catalysis, assembly, and biomedicine. [14][15][16][17] Recently, POMs have shown great potential in biomedical research fields due to their high biocompatibility, versatile structures, adjustable compositions, low cost and easy availability. 18,19 Particularly, the reduction of Mo-based POMs to molybdenum blue produces strong absorption in the NIR region, giving Mo-based POMs great potential as PTAs.…”