Ruthenium(II)–Arene Thiocarboxylates: Identification of a Stable Dimer Selectively Cytotoxic to Invasive Breast Cancer Cells

Abstract

Figure 2. The five a-mercaptocarboxylic acids (top) and four b-mercaptocarboxylic acids (bottom) used for complexation with [RuCl 2 (p-cymene)] 2 and their corresponding complex formula and code.

Neutral rhenium(i) tricarbonyl complexes with sulfur-donor ligands: anti-proliferative activity and cellular localization

“…8). Unlike for some of the Ru( ii ) thiocarboxylato complexes studied previously, 33 none of the new Re( i ) complexes showed selectivity for an invasive cancer cell line, MDA-MB-231, over non-invasive MCF-7 cells (Fig. 8).…”

“…The low initial seeding density ensured that the cells did not grow over 70-80% confluency in 72 h, as was established previously using real-time cell proliferation assays. 33 Stock solutions of treatment compounds (10-20 mM in DMSO, prepared on the day of experiments) were serially diluted 2-fold with DMSO immediately before the addition to cell culture medium, so that all the treatments, including the controls, contained 1.0 vol% DMSO. Cells were treated within 5 min after the addition of the compounds to cell culture medium.…”

“…12,14 Recently, we have shown that some dimeric Ru( ii )-arene complexes with thiocarboxylato ligands were selectively cytotoxic in an invasive triple-negative mesenchymal-like human breast cancer cell line, MDA-MB-231, over a panel of non-invasive epithelial cancer cell lines. 33 In this work, methyl esters of these acid ligands (methyl-mercaptocarboxylic esters) being nominally bifunctional but designed to be constrained as monodentate at the S atom were synthesized and characterised. These complexes generated neutral, as opposed to cationic, Re( i ) tricarbonyl complexes and were explored for their potential anti-cancer and cell imaging properties.…”

Substitution Kinetics, Albumin and Transferrin Affinities, and Hypoxia All Affect the Biological Activities of Anticancer Vanadium(V) Complexes

“…Typical kinetic curves of apoptosis and cell death, expressed as percentages of green or red fluorescence cell area relative to the total cell area, 93 are shown in Figure 5c,d. These conditions correspond to the proliferation curves in Figure 4a,c.…”