Congratulations to Dr. Francesca Binacchi, Ester Giorgi and Dr. Giacomo Salvadori for the publication of the results of the SYSSi project funded by PRIMULE (PRomoting Innovative and MULtidisciplinary Experiments at DSCM). This project was part of the doctoral work of the three researchers and involved the study of the interaction of a fluorescent silver(I) biscarbene and different conformations of non-canonical DNA, G-quadruplex.
For comparison studies the analogue gold(I) complex has been studied where possible. The work involved three different areas of chemistry: inorganic, analytical and physical. The project involved the synthesis of ligands and metal complexes, the studies of interaction in solution and in silico (theoretical calculations) between the complexes and different conformations of DNA G-quadruplex. The project was then extended with further in solution studies of interaction with other relevant biomolecules such as DNA double helix, RNA double and triple helix, DNA i-motif and a model protein such as serum albumin. Finally, the cytotoxicity of complexes on different cancer cell lines and a healthy cell line was evaluated.
All results can be found in the paper at https://doi.org/10.1039/D4DT00851K
