In organic chemistry, atoms other than carbon and hydrogen are generally referred to as heteroatoms. The most common heteroatoms are nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. Now I present to you an article called DNA binding properties of novel cytotoxic gold(III) complexes of terpyridine ligands: the impact of steric and electrostatic effects, published in 2006-09-30, which mentions a compound: 89972-77-0, mainly applied to gold terpyridine functionalized preparation antitumor activity DNA binding; steric effect DNA binding gold complex functionalized terpyridine, Formula: C22H17N3.
Four Au(III) complexes of terpyridine derivatives In+ (R = H, 2-naphthyloxy, n = 2; R = PPh3, n = 3; R = NHCH2CH2SO3Na, n = 2) were synthesized and characterized by spectroscopic methods. In vitro data demonstrated that all of them showed higher cytotoxicity than cisplatin against the human nonsmall-cell lung cancer cell line (A-549), the human stomach carcinoma cell line (SGC-7901), the human cervix carcinoma cell line (HELA), the human colon carcinoma cell line (HCT-116), the human liver carcinoma cell line (BEL-7402), the murine leukemia cell line (P-388) and the human acute promyelocytic leukemia cell line (HL-60). Complex I (R = PPh3) exhibits the highest activity, with growth inhibition rates of over 80% at 10-8 mol L-1 against the A-549, HCT-116 and HELA tumor cell lines. The free ligands are also very cytotoxic against the cell lines tested. Complexes I are stable in aqueous solution for 2 days in the presence of the biol. reducing agent glutathione. The inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry data showed that DNA isolated from cells treated with complexes I (R = H, PPh3) contained Au with Au-to-nucleotide ratios of ∼1:6,400 and 1:4,900, resp. Fluorescence titration, UV and CD analyses proved that the steric and electrostatic effects of the ligand remarkably influence the interactions of their Au(III) complexes with DNA. The DNA binding ability of the complexes was correlated with their cytotoxicity, which could potentially provide a new rationale for the future design of terpyridine-based metal complexes with antitumor potential.
In addition to the literature in the link below, there is a lot of literature about this compound(4-(p-Tolyl)-2,2:6,2-terpyridine)Formula: C22H17N3, illustrating the importance and wide applicability of this compound(89972-77-0).
Reference:
Metal catalyst and ligand design,
Ligand Template Strategies for Catalyst Encapsulation – NCBI