Iria Salvadó Lopez, PhD CiQUS student, defended on Monday, 11th of January, her doctoral thesis entitled "Design and synthesis of bioactive metallopeptides of Ru (II) and Ir (III)". In this work she has described the use of solid-phase peptide synthesis methodology for obtaining bioactive metal complexes of Ru (II) and Ir (III). Professors Miguel Vazquez Lopez and M. Eugenio Vazquez, both CiQUS researchers, have been the supervisors of this work, which is part of their research line focused on the development of metallopeptides with potential applications in the area of chemical biology.
Chemical biology is a reseach field that aims to apply chemical tools and methodologies for the study and modification of biological systems. Despite its huge development over the past decade, the contributions from the coordination chemistry, and in general from inorganic chemistry, in this area are still relatively scarce.
One possible reason for this underdevelopment could be the intrinsic chemical differences between biomolecules and most ligands used in coordination chemistry, which make difficult the integration of metal complexes in biological systems. Moreover, the rigidity of classical synthetic methods in solution, which are conventionally used to obtain organic ligands, difficults quick and easy access to these molecules.
In order to solve these problems, in this thesis it is proposed the use of peptide ligands as precursors of bioactive metal complexes, in order to improve the biocompatibility of the final species. Moreover, these ligands can be obtained through a more flexible, quick and efficient synthetic procedure, taking advantage of the solid phase peptide synthetic methodology.
