[Project supported by FrenchBIC] Raul Balderrama : Exploring of the therapeutical properties of novel phenanthroline based ligands

Raul Balderrama, from the Institut des Sciences Moléculaires de Marseille, spent two weeks in the lab of Christelle Hureau, team “Alzheimer et amyloïdes”, Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination in Toulouse. This project was supported by a grant from FrenchBIC.

During my PhD I have been exploring the potential of different ligands to chelate copper(II) and/or copper(I) and inhibit Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) production. The promising results prompted us to study these ligands in the context of Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Dr. Christelle Hureau at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination (LCC, CNRS) in Toulouse. With this goal, and thanks to a grant from FrenchBIC, I spent two weeks in her laboratory to study the behavior of these ligands in more biological relevant conditions. Namely, I studied their capability to chelate copper and stop the production of ROS in presence of Zn(II) and Aβ peptide. Another important aspect was to analyze the effect of these ligands on the oligomerization process of the Aβ peptide. For that, we did aggregation studies and the preliminary data were encouraging. We will keep our collaboration to further analyze their activity. I am thankful to FrenchBIC for the grant and to Dr. Christelle Hureau and her team for hosting me, I did have a great time and learnt a lot.

Raul Balderrama

Publication: “Unexpected Trends in Copper Removal from Aβ Peptide: When Less Ligand Is Better and Zn Helps”, Inorganic Chemistry, 2021, doi : 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c03407