Loukiani Savva

In the course of discovering new heteroaromatic motifs, capable of interaction with biologically-relevant G-quadruplex nucleic acid conformations, our laboratory has explored the complexation of amide-substituted Pyr-Pyr-Ph ligands and some of their derivatives with K₂PtCl₄. Platinum(II) serves the structural role of restricting the ligand to a rigid square planar conformation, potentially useful for pi-pi stacking interactions with the solvent exposed terminal G-quartets of a G-quadruplex. Critically, in the obtained organometallic species, a C-H bond has been functionalized into a C-Pt bond. Various spectroscopic techniques have been used for elucidating the nature of the interaction between the organometallic species and G-quadruplex forming DNA sequences from the human telomere and the c-myc oncogene promoter.