Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) presents considerable therapeutic challenges due to disease heterogeneity, absence of established therapeutic targets, and aggressive metastatic potential with higher rate of distant recurrence. In addition, TNBC is most common in younger patients (before age 40), especially in African American women, often leading to significant disease progression and poor prognosis. The limited efficacy of current treatments for advanced breast cancer has served as an impetus for a concerted effort to identify chemo-preventive agents for treatment. This process has often involved the use of cisplatin, which is widely used for the treatment of many cancers despite its high toxicity, undesirable side effects, and problems with drug resistance in primary and metastatic cancers. Biomedically relevant cobalt-containing compounds have provided promising results for cancer treatment. Novel cobalt(III)-based complexes have been synthesized and characterized in order to develop an improved treatment for TNBC with the hope that they can be used while decreasing the side effects involving the use of cisplatin. The novel complexes [Co(phen)₂(salH)](PF₆)₂ (where phen = 1,10-phenantroline and salH = deprotonated salicylaldehyde) and [Co(phen)₂(F-azo-sal)](PF₆)₂ (where F-azo-sal = (E)-5-((4-fluorophenyl)diazenyl)-2-hydroxybenzaldehyde) were synthesized from the starting material, anhydrous [Co(phen)₂(H₂O)₂](NO₃)₃. Both complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, followed by ¹H NMR and FTIR spectroscopies, and will be further characterized by high resolution mass spectroscopy (HRMS), ⁵⁹Co NMR, UV-visible spectroscopies, and X-ray crystallography, where appropriate. In vitro studies will be conducted with the human TNBC cell lines, MDA-MB231 and HCC1937 to determine the IC₅₀ values of the complexes. The human breast epithelial tissue cell line MCF-10A is the control non-cancerous cell line.

Michael Celestine

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