Aleardo Giusti

Bio: Aleardo Giusti is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Crystal structure & Dithiocarbamate. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 26 publications receiving 459 citations.

The structures and magnetic properties of complexes containing 3d- and 4f-metals

Abstract: Heterometallic complexes containing 3d-/4f-metals have been made with a variety of ligands including Schiff-bases, pyridonates and amino-alcohols. The majority of species with Schiff-base ligands are trinuclear with Cu2Ln cores, and with other ligands larger oligomers are found, ranging as large as Cu12La8 and Cu12Ln6 clusters (Ln = Y, Nd, Sm or Gd). The magnetic properties displayed by these polynuclear species are discussed, and the magnetic coupling between CuII and GdIII is always found to be ferromagnetic.

Gold dithiocarbamate derivatives as potential antineoplastic agents: design, spectroscopic properties, and in vitro antitumor activity.

Abstract: At present, cisplatin (cis-diamminodichloroplatinum(II)) is one of the most largely employed anticancer drugs as it is effective in the treatment of 70-90% of testicular and, in combination with other drugs, of ovarian, small cell lung, bladder, brain, and breast tumors. Anyway, despite its high effectiveness, it exhibits some clinical problems related to its use in the curative therapy, such as a severe normal tissue toxicity (in particular, nephrotoxicity) and the frequent occurrence of initial and acquired resistance to the treatment. To obtain compounds with superior chemotherapeutic index in terms of increased bioavailability, higher cytotoxicity, and lower side effects than cisplatin, we report here on some gold(I) and gold(III) complexes with dithiocarbamate ligands (DMDT = N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate; DMDTM = S-methyl-N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate; ESDT = ethylsarcosinedithiocarbamate), which have been synthesized, purified, and characterized by means of elemental analyses, conductivity measurements, mono- and bidimensional NMR, FT-IR, and UV-vis spectroscopy, and thermal analyses. Moreover, the electrochemical properties of the designed compounds have been studied through cyclic voltammetry. All the synthesized gold complexes have been tested for their in vitro cytotoxic activity. Remarkably, most of them, in particular gold(III) derivatives of N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate and ethylsarcosinedithiocarbamate, have been proved to be much more cytotoxic in vitro than cisplatin, with IC50 values about 1- to 4-fold lower than that of the reference drug, even toward human tumor cell lines intrinsically resistant to cisplatin itself. Moreover, they appeared to be much more cytotoxic also on the cisplatin-resistant cell lines, with activity levels comparable to those on the corresponding cisplatin-sensitive cell lines, ruling out the occurrence of cross-resistance phenomena and supporting the hypothesis of a different antitumor activity mechanism of action.