Design strategies to improve the sensitivity of photoactive metal carbonyl complexes (photoCORMs) to visible light and their potential as CO-donors to biological targets.

The recent surprising discovery of the beneficial effects of carbon monoxide (CO) in mammalian physiology has drawn attention toward site-specific delivery of CO to biological targets. To avoid difficulties in handling of this noxious gas in hospital settings, researchers have focused their attention on metal carbonyl complexes as CO-releasing molecules (CORMs). Because further control of such CO delivery through light-triggering can be achieved with photoactive metal carbonyl complexes (photoCORMs), we and other groups have attempted to isolate such complexes in the past few years. Typical metal carbonyl complexes release CO when exposed to UV light, a fact that often deters their use in biological systems. From the very beginning, our effort therefore was directed toward identifying design principles that could lead to photoCORMs that release CO upon illumination with low-power (5-15 mW/cm(2)) visible and near-IR light. In our work, we have utilized Mn(I), Re(I), and Ru(II) centers (all d(6) ground state configuration) to ensure overall stability of the carbonyl complexes. We also hypothesized that transfer of electron density from the electron-rich metal centers to π* MOs of the ligand frame via strong metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) transitions in the visible/near-IR region would weaken metal-CO back-bonding and promote rapid CO photorelease. This expectation has been realized in a series of carbonyl complexes derived from a variety of designed ligands and smart choice of ligand/coligand combinations. Several principles have emerged from our systematic approach to the design of principal ligands and the choice of auxiliary ligands (in addition to the number of CO) in synthesizing these photoCORMs. In each case, density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) study afforded insight into the dependence of the CO photorelease from a particular photoCORM on the wavelength of light. Results of these theoretical studies indicate that extended conjugation in the principal ligand frames as well as the nature of the donor groups lower the energy of the lowest unoccupied MOs (LUMOs) while auxiliary ligands like PPh3 and Br(-) modulate the energy of the occupied orbitals depending on their strong σ- or π-donating abilities. As a consequence, the ligand/coligand combination dictates the energy of the MLCT bands of the resulting carbonyl complexes. The rate of CO photorelease can be altered further by proper disposition of the coligands in the coordination sphere to initiate trans-effect or alter the extent of π back-bonding in the metal-CO bonds. Addition of more CO ligands blue shift the MLCT bands, while intersystem crossing impedes labilization of metal-CO bonds in several Re(I) and Ru(II) carbonyl complexes. We anticipate that our design principles will provide help in the future design of photoCORMs that could eventually find use in clinical studies.