First Blog Entry–January 2009

It’s incredible to finally reach the end of the road: this is the last semester of investigation with the BIOMINDS program.  It has been an outstanding experience, out of this world!!!  But of course, investigation never takes a rest, so we have new goals for this semester with our research work.   

 

Our future goals this semester are:

 

      Complex [PtCl₂(NH₃)(5-methylthiazole)] reacts slower with guanosine than cisplatin, under similar conditions. (This reaction with guanosine compared to cisplatin will be done with the other synthesized products)

      Further studies (¹H-NMR, ¹⁹⁵Pt-NMR and electrophoresis) with DNA and DNA models (GUO, GMP) are required.

      Cytotoxicity studies are necessary to evaluate the anticancer potential of the new complexes developed in this work.

 

This is the third part of our investigation: INTERACTIONS! During the previous two semesters we have synthesized and characterized complexes that are platinum based and contain thiazole derivatives.  Interactions are done once we know that the complexes are synthesized correctly, characterized and pure. 

 

Some of the new techniques that we will be doing in the lab will be:

 

     ¹⁹⁵Pt-NMR-is mostly used for studying platinum complexes, their structure, conformation and dynamics, and platinum binding in biological systems.

     Electrophoresis: The migration of charged colloidal particles or molecules through a solution under the influence of an applied electric field usually provided by immersed electrodes.