Cellular uptake of highly-functionalized ruthenium(II) tris-bipyridine protein-surface mimetics

This manuscript describes cell-uptake studies with HEK 293T cells on a series of ruthenium complexes shown previously to act as receptors for protein surface recognition and was motivated by a desire to establish if these receptors represent suitable templates for further elaboration as inhibitors of protein-protein interactions. The results illustrate that large (>3000 Da) highly functionalized anionic ruthenium complexes are efficiently transfected via endocytosis to lysosomes with negligible toxicity.