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Updated: Mar 9, 2026

A Novel Technique for Generating and Observing Chemiluminescence in a Biological Setting
Published on: March 9, 2017
Asymmetric rhenium tricarbonyl complexes show superior luminescence properties in live cell imaging
Lukasz J Raszeja1, Daniel Siegmund, Anna L Cordes
1Faculty of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Inorganic Chemistry I - Bioinorganic Chemistry, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany. Nils.Metzler-Nolte@rub.de.
Abstract:
The synthesis and photophysical properties of a novel series of rhenium tricarbonyl complexes based on tridentate phenanthridinyl-containing ligands are described. Photophysical data reveal beneficial luminescence behaviour especially for compounds with an asymmetric ligand set. These advantageous properties are not limited to organic solvents, but indeed also improved in aqueous solutions. The suitability of our new rhenium complexes as potent imaging agents has been confirmed by fluorescence microscopy on living cancer cells, which also confirms superior long-time stability under fluorescence microscopy conditions. Colocalisation studies with commercial organelle stains reveal an accumulation of the complexes in the endoplasmic reticulum for all tested cell lines.
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