Photodynamic Research GroupsThis is a selection of some prominent academic photodynamic research groups. There are a lot more of them, especially in China. If Ruvidar PDT receives FDA approval for NMIBC some of these groups may receive a lot of interest from big pharma companies who want to get into the act. As far as I know, Dr. McFarland's group is the only one with an actual human clinical trial based on a transition metal PDC.
Gasser Group (Chimie ParisTech - PSL University) https://www.gassergroup.com/ Our group is currently working on three different but complementary topics, namely Inorganic Chemical Biology, Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry and Medicinal Organometallic Chemistry. All projects undertaken in our group involve the preparation, characterisation and utilisation of metal complexes for biological or medicinal purposes. Our single objective is to understand, identify and/or influence biological processes in living cells using metal-based compounds. Our research therefore lies at the interface between inorganic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology and biology. As a consequence, our group hosts not only chemistry students but also biology students.
Ruthenium complexes as DNA binding cytotoxins
Cancer is the second leading causes of death in the United States, and there is a pressing need for new drugs to address this disease. One of the greatest drawbacks of current treatments is their debilitating side effects, due to non-specific cytotoxicity. In contrast, “pro-drugs” are non-toxic until activated, allowing for both spatial and temporal control of their activity, facilitating selective targeting of cancerous tissues. Ruthenium complexes have been used for decades as nucleic acid binders and probes, due to their fortuitous combination of structural, electrochemical, and photophysical features. Since they are electro- and photo-active, there is the potential to develop these types of molecules as targeted chemotherapies that are less toxic than the classical drugs available. We are interested in developing photo-activated Ruthenium complexes which should act as inert “pro-drugs” until triggered by light, whereupon they can crosslink DNA. In addition, due to their mechanism of action, there is potential for their use as hypoxia-selective agents, allowing us to target these drug- and radiation-resistant types of tumors.
Research in the Kodanko laboratory is at the interface of organic, inorganic and medicinal chemistry. We are interested in harnessing the power of metal complexes for biological applications. Projects currently being conducted in the Kodanko laboratory span across many subdisciplines of chemistry research including organic and inorganic synthesis, catalysis, kinetic and mechanistic studies, coordination chemistry, enzyme inhibition and cell biology. Recent interests have focused on the development of light-activated compounds for biological research applications, and as potential therapeutics. A major focus of the Kodanko laboratory is to develop new molecules that can be activated with light. In this method enzyme inhibitors or other bioactive compounds are caged and released with light, leading to high levels of selectivity for enzyme inhibition under light vs. dark conditions. This method provides a novel way to achieve spatial and kinetic control over enzyme activity for chemical biology and anticancer applications. Recent work from our laboratory proved our method can be applied to inhibitors of the cysteine protease cathepsin B, an enzyme overexpressed in cancer and other human disease states, as well as cytochrome P450 enzymes CYP17A1 and CYP3A4 involved in biosynthesis and human drug metabolism. Compounds that display dual action properties, including photorelease and photosensitization have been applied successfully in cell models of human diseases.
The Papish group does bioinorganic and organometallic chemistry in Tuscaloosa AL. Our aim is to mimic how nature controls reactivity by using hydrogen bonds or protonation/deprotonation to control reactivity. The best man made and natural catalysts (enzymes) use these methods to accelerate reactions. We have a strong interest in green chemistry and we aim to use these methods to develop new means of storing energy, performing organic transformations, and testing metal complexes as anti-cancer drugs. It is hoped that by mimicking enzymes we can better understand how enzymes work. Since we both design fancy organic ligands and study the metal complex chemistry of these ligands, our interests lie at the interface of organic and inorganic chemistry.
Sylvestre Bonnet studies the (photo)chemistry of metal-based molecules in biological and biomimetic environment. By combining bioinorganic chemistry and photochemistry his group makes new light-activatable prodrugs for use as targeted anticancer agents with minimal side effects. Another part of the group studies how to assemble metal-based photosensitizers and catalysts to trap the sun energy into a solar fuel.
The Turro group is interested in understanding and utilizing transition metal complexes in photochemical reactions. The potential applications of these photochemical reactions span from photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photoactivated chemical therapies (PACT) for the treatment of tumors, luminescent reporters and sensors, to solar energy conversion. In order to improve and expand their reactivity, the fundamental understanding of the excited states of mononuclear and dinuclear metal-metal bonded transition metal complexes is necessary and remains an important subject of investigation (National Science Foundation). Transition metal complexes that are nontoxic in the dark and become highly toxic upon irradiation with visible or near-IR light are ideal for PDT. Complexes that undergo efficient photoinduced ligand dissociation are under investigation, as well as complexes that can also exhibit dual-reactivity by simultaneously delivering small molecule drugs or enzyme inhibitors.