Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Alberto Gobbo for his scientific publication entitled “A Green Synthesis of Carbene-Metal-Amides (CMAs) and Carboline-Derived CMAs with Potent in Vitro and ex Vivo Anticancer Activity” in ChemMedChem. The synthesis of Carbene-Metal-Amide (CMA) complexes based on the coinage metals (Au, Ag, Cu) and N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as ancillary ligands is improved by circumventing the use of toxic organic solvents which were previously required for their purification.
Moreover, in light of the new and promising applications of CMAs as potential anticancer pharmaceuticals, complexes incorporating carbolines as the amido fragments were also included in the scope of this work. The novel complexes are screened both in vitro and ex vivo, against several cancer cell lines and High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (HGSOC) tumoroids, respectively. Excellent cytotoxicity values are obtained for most complexes, while the structural variety of the CMA library screened thus far, provides promising leads for future developments. Variations of all three components (NHC, metal, amido ligand), enable the establishment of trends regarding cytotoxicity and selectivity towards cancerous over normal cells.
The work has been just accepted and it can be found at https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202200135https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202200135
