Session: Bioinorganic Chemistry:

Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women in the United States. The estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (ER+) is a type of breast cancer that affects more than 50% of women diagnosed with invasive cancer. This disease affects the function of the cells in the breast, multiplying them out of control. Although Tamoxifen, a hormonal chemoprevention agent, is a useful treatment, it has a limited use throughout time since after an extended treatment it becomes an agonist on estrogen receptors. Therefore, organometallic compounds are being thoroughly studied, since they exhibit amazing properties. Among these, ferrocene, which exhibits antitumor properties. Our research group has successfully conjugated ferrocene to estrogens to specifically target hormone-dependent breast cancers cells. This has been made designing, synthetizing, characterizing, and performing docking studies to a ferrocene- conjugate, which could effectively target estrogen receptors over expressed in breast cancer. The success of each synthesis was proven through characterization methods using X-Ray Diffraction, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and Infrared Spectroscopy. Also, computational docking studies revealed that the ferrocene-hormone complex exhibits better affinity than estradiol towards the binding pocket of the estrogen receptor.

Arnold Rheingold

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