Self-assembly of oxamidato bridged ester functionalised dirhenium metallastirrups: synthesis, characterisation and cytotoxicity studies.

A new set of ester functionalised Re(i)-based oxamidato bridged neutral dinuclear metallacycles were synthesised by self-assembly of four components from three building blocks in a facile one-pot reaction via an orthogonal bonding approach. Oxidative addition of oxamide ligands (H2L = N,N'-diphenyloxamide, and N,N'-dibenzyloxamide) to rhenium carbonyl (Re2(CO)10) in the presence of semi-rigid and flexible ditopic pyridyl ligands (L' = o-phenylene diisonicotinate (pdi), ethane diyl di-4-pyridine carboxylate (etdp) and 1,4-butane diyl di-4-pyridine carboxylate (budp)) having ester functionality afforded neutral dirhenium metallacycles of the general formula [(CO)3Re(μ-L)(μ-L')Re(CO)3] (1-5) under solvothermal reaction conditions. The metallacyclic compounds were characterised using elemental analyses, IR, UV-vis and NMR spectroscopic techniques. Structural analyses of 2-5 by single crystal X-ray diffraction methods revealed a stirrup like molecular framework in which two fac-Re(CO)3 units are bridged together by dissymmetrical NO∩ON bis-chelation of oxamide ligands (as a pedestal of stirrups) and further connected by a flexible ditopic tecton (as an arched anchor of stirrups) in an orthogonal fashion. The cytotoxicity activities of dirhenium metallacycles 1-5 were studied in vitro against three different cancer cell lines and normal cells.