Elucidating and Optimizing the Photochemical Mechanism of Coumarin-Caged Tertiary Amines.

ABSTRACT: Photoactivatable or "caged" pharmacological agents combine the high spatiotemporal specificity of light application with the molecular specificity of drugs. A key factor in all optopharmacology experiments is the mechanism of uncaging, which dictates the photochemical quantum yield and determines the byproducts produced by the light-driven chemical reaction. In previous work, we demonstrated that coumarin-based photolabile groups could be used to cage tertiary amine drugs as quaternary ammonium salts. Although stable, water-soluble, and useful for experiments in brain tissue, these first-generation compounds exhibit relatively low uncaging quantum yield (Φ_u < 1%) and release the toxic byproduct formaldehyde upon photolysis. Here, we elucidate the photochemical mechanisms of coum

SUBMITTER: Banala S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11295134 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature