Cationic metal-corrole complexes: design, synthesis, and properties of guanine-quadruplex stabilizers.

A series of pyridinium and quaternary ammonium copper corroles has been designed and synthesized. All new compounds have been fully characterized by NMR spectroscopy, high-resolution mass spectrometry, UV/Vis spectrscopy, and elemental analysis. Biochemical studies have indicated that all of these corrole derivatives can stabilize G-quadruplex structures, with corrole 4 being the most effective according to the results of circular dichroism (CD) melting experiments, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) stop assays, and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiments. Moreover, both corroles 3 and 4 tend to induce the human telomeric sequence to form hybrid G-quadruplex structures, whereas corroles 8 and 9 are more inclined to induce the human telomeric sequence to form antiparallel G-quadruplex structures.