Seminar Pr Ingo Ott

Pr Ingo OTT

Institute of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry,
Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
Short biography: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8087-4618

Organometallic complexes with N-heterocyclic carbene ligands as novel chemotherapeutics with versatile pharmacological properties

Gold and silver complexes have a long history in medicine and are nowadays studied as novel drug candidates for the chemotherapy of cancer or infectious diseases. We have been working on gold and other metal complexes with N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands as new drug candidates and have reported on many interesting properties, such as the exceptionally strong inhibition of the enzyme thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) representing an unconventional mechanism of drug action. Building on extensive studies with gold and other metal NHC anticancer agents, we have recently extended our interests towards the antibacterial and antiviral activity of metal NHC complexes. The pharmacological properties and target selectivity of the individual organometallics can be modulated and fine-tuned by variation of the coordinated ligands and the type of metal. The high stability of the metal-carbon bond and the broad variety of possible structural modifications of the NHC ligand open up access to a large pool of structures and allow to apply novel approaches of synthetic medicinal chemistry, such as the design of hybrid antibiotics or organometallic proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs). In the presentation recent highlights of our ongoing projects will be presented.