Metallodrugs are unique: opportunities and challenges of discovery and development

Metals play vital roles in nutrients and medicines and provide chemical functionalities that are not accessible to purely organic compounds. At least 10 metals are essential for human life and about 46 other non-essential metals (including radionuclides) are also used in drug therapies and diagnostic agents. These include platinum drugs (in 50% of cancer chemotherapies), lithium (bipolar disorders), silver (antimicrobials), and bismuth (broad-spectrum antibiotics). While the quest for novel and better drugs is now as urgent as ever, drug discovery and development pipelines established for organic drugs and based on target identification and high-throughput screening of compound libraries are less effective when applied to metallodrugs. Metallodrugs are often prodrugs which undergo activation by ligand substitution or redox reactions, and are multi-targeting, all of which need to be considered when establishing structure–activity relationships. We focus on early-stage in vitro drug discovery, highlighting the challenges of evaluating anticancer, antimicrobial and antiviral metallo-pharmacophores in cultured cells, and identifying their targets. We highlight advances in the application of metal-specific techniques that can assist the preclinical development, including synchrotron X-ray spectro(micro)scopy, luminescence, and mass spectrometry-based methods, combined with proteomic and genomic (metallomic) approaches. A deeper understanding of the behavior of metals and metallodrugs in biological systems is not only key to the design of novel agents with unique mechanisms of action, but also to new understanding of clinically-established drugs.

The vital roles of metals in nutrients and medicines are not accessible to purely organic compounds.     

Use of ProteinChip array surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) to identify thymosin beta-4, a differentially secreted protein from lymphoblastoid cell lines

The identification of proteins differentially expressed between cancer and normal cells is vital for the development of cancer diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. Using a ProteinChip Biomarker System (Ciphergen Biosystems, Fremont, CA) which combines ProteinChip technology with time-of-flight mass spectrometry, we have developed a simple method to screen and identify differentially secreted proteins from tumor cell lines. Mass spectra of the range of proteins secreted from normal B-cells were generated along with those secreted from Epstein-Barr virus transformed B-cells. A mass peak at m/z = 4972.1 that was highly over-represented in the transformed B-cell line was chosen for identification and purified by reversed phase chromatography with concomitant monitoring of fractions by SELDI-TOF MS. The resulting purified protein was digested with trypsin and the peptide masses derived from the SELDI-TOF spectrum were used to search the public databases for protein identification. Fragment matching of the resulting peptides identified the protein as thymosin beta-4. Using LC-electrospray ionization MS/MS, the identity of this protein was confirmed. Thymosin beta-4 is a known marker in LCLs establishing the utility of this method to discover and identify proteins differentially expressed between cancers and their matched normal counterparts.     

Ketone enolization with lithium dialkylamides: the effects of structure,solvation, and mixed aggregates with excess butyllithium

The effects of lithium dialkylamide structure, mixed aggregate formation, and solvation on the stereoselectivity of ketone enolization were examined. Of the lithium dialkylamides examined, lithium tetramethylpiperidide (LiTMP) in THF resulted in the best enolization selectivity. The stereoselectivity was further improved in the presence of a LiTMP-butyllithium mixed aggregate. The use of less polar solvents reduced the enolization stereoselectivity. Ab initio calculations predict LDA and LiTMP to form mixed cyclic dimers in ethereal solvents. The calculations also predict LiTMP-alkyllithium mixed aggregates to competitively inhibit the formation of less stereoselective LiTMP-lithium enolate mixed aggregates.     

Integrity profiling of high throughput screening hits using LC-MS and related techniques

Integrity profiling of HTS hits is valuable for verification of the hit identity and purity. This provides early discovery researchers with more confident SAR theories. Methodology for integrity profiling of HTS hits must be high throughput, consume little material, and selectively provide structure-based data. Analytical techniques that can be utilized for integrity profiling methods are reviewed for their appropriateness in sample preparation, component separation, detection, purity quantitation, identity confirmation, and follow-up.     

On monotonicity of the modified likelihood ratio test for the equality of two covariances

For testing the hypothesis of equality of two covariances (Σ₁ and Σ₂) of two p-dimensional multivariate normal populations, it is shown that the power function of the modified likelihood ratio test increases as λ₁ increases from one and λ_r decreases from one where λ₁ > … > λ_r > 0 are the distinct characteristic roots of Σ₁Σ₂^?1, r ≤ p. As a by-product we get the unbiased result already established by Sugiura and Nagao (1968).     

Full-dimensional vibrational calculations for H5O2+ using an ab initio potential energy surface

We report quantum diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) and variational calculations in full dimensionality for selected vibrational states of H(5)O(2) (+) using a new ab initio potential energy surface [X. Huang, B. Braams, and J. M. Bowman, J. Chem. Phys. 122, 044308 (2005)]. The energy and properties of the zero-point state are focused on in the rigorous DMC calculations. OH-stretch fundamentals are also calculated using "fixed-node" DMC calculations and variationally using two versions of the code MULTIMODE. These results are compared with infrared multiphoton dissociation measurements of Yeh et al. [L. I. Yeh, M. Okumura, J. D. Myers, J. M. Price, and Y. T. Lee, J. Chem. Phys. 91, 7319 (1989)]. Some preliminary results for the energies of several modes of the shared hydrogen are also reported.     

Raman spectra of (NH4)3ZnCl4NO3 and (ND4)3ZnCl4NO3 between 295 and 60 K

Raman spectra from polycrystalline samples of (NH4)3ZnCl4NO3 and (ND4)3ZnCl4NO3 have been studied in the temperature range 60-295 K. Internal modes of both nitrate and tetrachlorozincate ions show expected band narrowing and intensification at lower temperature but no significant changes in frequency. Two bands in the lattice region of both compounds, assigned to nitrate ion libration and rocking, show linear increases in frequency with lowering temperature. The intensity of the libration mode shows a linear decrease with lowering temperature, but the intensity of the rocking mode is relatively insensitive to temperature change. Ammonium ion bands show greater structure at low temperature, suggesting differentiation between the two crystallographically distinct types of cation. The observed spectral changes are interpreted on the basis of increasing ordering and effectiveness of hydrogen bonds between ammonium ions and nitrate ions at low temperatures. The Raman spectra give no evidence of discontinuous changes in frequency or intensity, which would signal temperature-dependent transitions of the crystal structure. Unlike the related single-anion compounds NH4NO3 and (NH4)2ZnCl4, the room-temperature structure of (NH4)3ZnCl4NO3 and (ND4)3ZnCl4NO3 appears to persist at least to 60 K, being stabilized by increasingly ordered hydrogen bonding.     

Partial tubes about immersed manifolds

We consider a generalization of the idea of an -tube about a submanifold of ⁿ which includes, on the one hand, submanifolds parallel to the original and, on the other, isoparametric submanifolds about a focal submanifold. We discuss properties that are inherited from the core manifold and the type fibre. The construction is used to show that there are submanifolds with many different parallel submanifolds.