Abstract:
Complexes containing cobalt and carbon monoxide ligands, CO releasing molecules (CORMs), have the potential of anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory. In this paper, three hybrid CORMs
1-
3 were synthesized and tested for their toxicology
in vivo and bioactivities. The results suggest that the complexes have a long half-life in the range of 43-53 min; their oral LD
50 to mouse are between 1 500 mg·kg
-1 and 5 000 mg·kg
-1. After the successive administration, complex
1 exhibited a toxic activity in rats' liver, and induced an injury to liver cells. Complex
1 had a strong growth inhibition activity (IC
50 36.20 μmol·L
-1 and 39.25 μmol·L
-1) in both HeLa cells and HepG2 cells, complex
2 displayed a lower activity in the inhibition of HeLa cells proliferation than the control 5-FU (IC
50 114.19 μmol·L
-1), but had a higher activity in the inhibition of HepG2 cells than the control 5-FU (IC
50 171.34 μmol·L
-1). The anti-inflammatory study suggests that all of them reduce intracellular nitrite level, complexes
1 and
2 have a stronger activity than complex
3. Their anti-inflammatory activity attributes to the CO molecules of the CORMs, which was confirmed by comparison with the corresponding ligand.