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Gold(I/III)-Phosphine Complexes as Potent Antiproliferative Agents.

Author
Abstract
:

The reaction of gold reagents [HAuCl•3HO], [AuCl(tht)], or cyclometalated gold(III) precursor, [C^NAuCl] with chiral ((R,R)-(-)-2,3-bis(t-butylmethylphosphino) quinoxaline) and non-chiral phosphine (1,2-Bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane, dppe) ligands lead to distorted Au(I), (1, 2, 4, 5) and novel cyclometalated Au(III) complexes (3, 6). These gold compounds were characterized by multinuclear NMR, microanalysis, mass spectrometry, and X-ray crystallography. The inherent electrochemical properties of the gold complexes were also studied by cyclic voltammetry and theoretical insight of the complexes was gained by density functional theory and TD-DFT calculations. The complexes effectively kill cancer cells with IC in the range of ~0.10-2.53 μΜ across K562, H460, and OVCAR8 cell lines. In addition, the retinal pigment epithelial cell line, RPE-Neo was used as a healthy cell line for comparison. Differential cellular uptake in cancer cells was observed for the compounds by measuring the intracellular accumulation of gold using ICP-OES. Furthermore, the compounds trigger early - late stage apoptosis through potential disruption of redox homeostasis. Complexes 1 and 3 induce predominant G1 cell cycle arrest. Results presented in this report suggest that stable gold-phosphine complexes with variable oxidation states hold promise in anticancer drug discovery and need further development.

Year of Publication
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2019
Journal
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Scientific reports
Volume
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9
Issue
:
1
Number of Pages
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12335
Date Published
:
2019
URL
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48584-5
DOI
:
10.1038/s41598-019-48584-5
Short Title
:
Sci Rep
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