Sintesi e sviluppo di complessi di oro con leganti imidazolici: applicazioni in campo farmacologico e nella catalisi

Gold complexes are attracting much interest in medicinal and catalytic field. For example, in medicine there is a drug gold-based calledAuranofin, meanwhile in the catalytic area, the most known example is the CO oxidation reaction catalyzed by gold nanoparticles.Imidazole is incorporated into many important biological molecules, being present in biological building-blocks, such as histidine, and the related hormon histamin. Many drugs contain an imidazole ring, for example antifungal drugs like econazole and miconazole, and the sedative midazolam. Thus, imidazoles play a key role in our organism and in the pharmaceutical industry, and in the last years many imidazole-based moleculs have been developed showing importan pharmacological properties. One remarkable example is NAMI-A, an imidazole-ruthenium complex that has demonstrated anti-metastatic activity in preclinical studies.Within this frame, we synthesized and characterized a number of new gold(I) and gold(III) complexes, some dinuclear gold(I)/gold(III) and gold(I)/gold(I) and a few gold(I)/platinum(II) complexes with imidazole-based ligands. These complexes have been testedin vitroagainst model human cancer cells lines, mainly ovarian cancer lines A2780 R and S, and some of them showed very promising antiproliferative properties.The catalytic activity of some of these complexes has been also explored in the three-component coupling reaction of aldehydes, amines, and alkynes in water to synthesize propargylamines, which are extremely versatile building blocks for organic synthesis. Excellent results have been obtained in most cases.