Potential antiprostatic performance of novel lanthanide‑complexes based on 5‑nitropicolinic acid

Abstract

Two new lanthanide-complexes based on the 5-nitropicolinate ligand (5-npic) were obtained and fully characterized. Singlecrystal X-ray diffraction revealed that these compounds are isostructural to a Dy-complex, previously published by us, based on dinuclear monomers link together with an extended hydrogen bond network, providing a final chemical formula of [ Ln2(5-npic)6(H2O)4]·(H2O)2, where Ln = Dy (1), Gd (2), and Tb (3). Preliminary photoluminescent studies exhibited a ligand-centered emission for all complexes. The potential antitumoral activity of these materials was assayed in a prostatic cancer cell line (PC-3; the 2nd most common male cancerous disease), showing a significant anticancer activity (50–60% at 500 μg·mL−1). In turn, a high biocompatibility by both, the complexes and their precursors in human immunological HL-60 cells, was evidenced. In view of the strongest toxic effect in the tumoral cell line provided by the free 5-npic ligand (~ 40–50%), the overall anticancer complex performance seems to be triggered by the presence of this molecule.