Gold phosphine and carbene complexes as potential antimitochondrial anticancer agents: design, synthesis and biological chemistry.

为了克服与现有抗癌药物相关的两个主要问题（对治疗的抗性和缺乏正常细胞和癌细胞之间的区分），目前对在化疗中靶向线粒体细胞死亡途径有很大兴趣。 本项目将探讨一系列含吡啶基膦的金配合物的作用方式，这些配合物可能通过抗线粒体机制发挥作用。此外，我们将评估一个新的家庭的金配合物的基础上卡宾，而不是膦成分。 这些化合物提供了易于合成、毒性较低和能够微调分子特性以最大化抗癌活性的潜在优势。

To overcome the two major problems associated with existing anticancer drugs (resistance to therapy and lack of discrimination between normal and cancer cells) there is much current interest in targeting mitochondrial cell death pathways in chemotherapy. This project will probe the mode of action of a series of gold complexes containing pyridylphosphines that may act by an antimitochondrial mechanism. Also, we will evaluate a new family of gold complexes based on carbene rather than phosphine components. Such compounds offer the potential advantages of ease of synthesis, lower toxicity and the ability to fine-tune molecular properties to maximise anticancer activity.