Anticancer 8-hydroxyquinoline-amino acid hybrids and their half-sandwich Ru and Rh complexes : solution chemistry and interaction with biomolecules

Development of novel chemotherapeutic agents aims to obtain more effective and selective compounds. Platinum(II)-containing chemotherapeutics have been widely used for decades in cancer therapy against solid tumors due to their effectiveness; although, their use is accompanied by drawbacks such the serious side-effects and resistance [1]. To overcome these problems, efforts have been made to find better alternatives such as the complexes of other platinum metals. 8-hydroxyquinolines and their metal complexes are widely investigated due to their anticancer properties [2,3]; however, they often have limited water solubility. In this work two novel water-soluble 8-hydroxyquinoline-D-amino acid hybrids, [(R)-1-((5-chloro-8- hydroxyquinolin-7-yl)methyl)pyrrolidine-2-carboxylic acid (8HQCl-D-Pro) and its homologue 8HQCl-D-hPro (Chart 1), and their [Ru(η6 -p-cymene)(H2O)3] 2+ and [Rh(η5 -C5Me5)(H2O)3] 2+ complexes were developed