BIOINORGANICS

• The experimental part of the course will involve the design of the synthesis of metal compounds with possible antitumour and/or antiviral activity. The selection will depend upon the specific interests of the group but might consist in one of the following: designing functionalized ligands to achieve maximum solubility, introducing changes in the compounds already studied, or adding chiral centres. The work will involve synthesis and characterization of the ligands and of the metal compounds to be studied, including platinum, ruthenium and other metal ions. Students will carry out a complete structural characterization, using both spectroscopic diffraction and X-ray diffraction techniques if possible, and conducting complementary studies, magnetic measurements in the case of paramagnetic ions, etc.
  The second part of the project will consist in an approach to the biological behaviour of the compounds, using those techniques currently available to evaluate the capacity of interaction against DNA. Amongst other activities, circular dichroism studies, the use of agarose gel electrophoresis for mobility assays and imaging by atomic force microscopy will also be performed.
  Assays in tumour cell lines or virus colonies will be conducted to analyse the activity of the new compounds.
  A further objective of the project will consist in the synthesis of new polynuclear complexes as bioinorganic models.
  
  RECOMMENDED READING
  M.Crul, R.C.A. van Waardenburg, J.H. Beijnen, J.H.M. Schellens. 2002. "DNA-based drug interactions of cisplatin". Cancer Treatment Reviews, 28, 291-303
  E.R.Jamieson, S.J.Lippard. 1999. "Structure, Recognition and Processing of Cisplatin-DNA adducts". Chem. Rev., 99 2467-2498
  N.Farrell. 1989. "Transition Metal Complexes as drugs and chemotherapeutic agents". Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht