Abstract
Gold-based drugs have been successfully used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. When administered, they undergo ligand exchange reactions in the body with biofluids, cells and proteins. NMR spectroscopy is a very useful technique for probing these ligand exchange reactions under physiological conditions. The strength of the binding ligands can be estimated by studying the chemical shift changes in13C and31P NMR. It is also a powerful method for investigating the kinetics and thermodynamics of the exchange reactions of gold drugs with biomolecules. The purpose of this review report is to highlight the importance of NMR spectroscopy in the study of gold biochemistry and to bridge the fairly large gap in the progress of this interesting area of bioinorganic chemistry.
Highlights
The first use of gold compounds for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis was reported by Lande in 1929 and since they have been in clinical use as anti-arthritic agents
The reactions of auranofin (Et3PAuSATg) with various thiones have been monitored by 13C and 31P NMR [56,57]. These studies revealed that both Et3PAuCl and (Et3P) and SATg− ligands were replaced by thiones simultaneously from gold(I) in auranofin forming [>C=S–Au–SATg] and [Et3P–Au–S=C
NMR spectroscopy is found to be a useful technique to observe the exchange reactions of gold drugs even in the complex biological media and allows simultaneous detection of many metabolites involved in different metabolic pathways
Summary
The first use of gold compounds for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (pain in joints) was reported by Lande in 1929 and since they have been in clinical use as anti-arthritic agents. The principal extra cellular protein of blood, binds to about 90% of the gold in serum and functions as a defecto transport agent [21] With their chain structures, gold thiolates have a capacity, to react rapidly with a variety of ligands, like thiols, thiones, selenols and cyanide, while the reactions of auranofin are slower because of the strong binding of both ligands (triethylphosphine and thioglucose) to gold(I) [10,17,22,23,24,25]. This article describes a detailed review of the use of NMR spectroscopy in following the exchange reactions of anti-rheumatic gold(I) complexes with various biologically important ligands. The applications of NMR to study the structure-activity relationship are highlighted that would help in designing novel gold drugs and understanding their mechanism of action
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