Alkoxy bridged binuclear rhenium (I) complexes as a potential sensor for β-amyloid aggregation

•β-Amyloid protein enhances the luminescence of Re(I) complexes.•A sensitive and selective method to detect aggregation of β-amyloid was developed.•The strong binding of β-amyloid with Re(I) complexes is attributed to hydrophobic as well as π–π stacking interactions.

Alkoxy bridged binuclear rhenium(I) complexes are used as a probe for the selective and sensitive detection of aggregation of β-amyloid fibrils that are consorted with Alzheimer׳s disease (AD). The strong binding of the complexes is affirmed by the fluorescence enhancement and calculated binding constant value in the order of 105 M−1 is obtained from the Scatchard plots. The binding of β-amyloid can be attributed to π−π stacking interaction of naphthalene moiety present in rhenium(I) complexes, and it is supported by docking studies. The selectivity is quite high towards other proteins and the formation of fibrils can be observed in the range of 30–40 nm through the AFM and TEM techniques.

Graphical abstractAlkoxy bridged binuclear rhenium(I) complexes as a probe for the detection of aggregation of β-amyloid fibrils with binding of the complexes that are confirmed by the enhancement of fluorescence intensity. Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide