Martin GILLARD has received the 2023 IMCN Best Thesis Award on 24 May 2024.
His work was entitled "Developing Ruthenium(II) Salphen Schiff Base Complexes towards Theranostic Applications ".
This Prize, which is granted yearly by the IMCN Institute, rewards the most outstanding PhD work among those who graduated during the previous civil year (2023 in the present case). This initiative aims at promoting excellence in scientific research within the Institute.
The jury, chaired by Prof. Xavier GONZE, highlights Martin Gillard's exemplary doctoral thesis, exploring the potential of a new class of ruthenium complexes towards anticancer theranostic applications.
This embodied a multidisciplinary approach encompassing both organic and inorganic synthesis, extended to the characterization of photophysical properties and biophysical interaction studies. Throughout his doctoral journey, Martin Gillard has been an ambassador of IMCN in several research groups outside of UCLouvain, also acquiring unique combined research skills in these laboratories. Numerous high-impact publications, considering his domain of activity, have naturally followed. Moreover, Martin demonstrated remarkable versatility by integrating research with his teaching responsibilities during his assistantship.
Abstract
Cancer is a major health concern as it was estimated to account for 19.3 million new cases and 10.0 million deaths worldwide in 2020. Even if the treatment of cancer has known considerable progress during the last decades, the current therapies show limitations particularly once the metastatic stage is reached. Indeed, the poor ability of the current therapies to differentiate cancer from healthy cells often leads to undesired side effects that limit the admistered dose and decrease the chances of recovery. This has stimulated the design of drugs able to specifically target a biological signature of cancer in order to either develop more targeted treatment or to design new diagnostic tools.
During this Ph.D., we aimed at exploring the potential of a new class of polyazaaromatic ruthenium(II) complexes built on Schiff base type ligands towards anticancer theranostic applications. The synthesized complexes show strong affinity and suitable selectivity for G-quadruplex DNA in addition to very promising in cellulo properties.
Moreover, the use of Schiff base ligands containing the fluorescein moieity allowed to design RuII complexes that are very interesting candidates for developing pH activatable photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy.
Finally, three RuII polyazaaromatic complexes were implemented for the photodetection of 8-oxo-guanine lesions in the human telomeric sequence, which may constitute a valuable tool for the assessment of the carcinogenesis risk level.