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Lighting Up Ruthenium Complexes to Fight Cancer

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.2c04867

"Now, Sherri McFarland, Colin Cameron, Marta Alberto, and colleagues have identified the ruthenium complexes that have the potential to overcome that significant obstacle in light-based cancer therapy by specific manipulation of key excited states (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c02475). By computational, spectroscopic, and biological methods, the team demonstrated that two complexes, Ru-3T and Ru-4T, can switch the dominant excited state from triplet metal-centered (3MC) to a ligand-based triplet intraligand charge-transfer (3ILCT) state. While Ru-4T had the poorest photosubstitution quantum yields, its long triplet lifetimes, with attomolar phototoxicity in normoxia and picomolar in hypoxia, made it one of the most potent photosensitizers to date. This study lays the foundations to further examine oligothienyl-based 3ILCT states and better understand the differences in potency among Ru-4T analogs. "