Interaction of porphyrins bearing peripheral cationic heterocycles with G-quadruplex DNA.
Telomere-interactive compounds such as TMPyP4 are expected to inhibit telomerase and thus to be potential anti-cancer drugs. We investigated the interaction of porphyrins bearing peripheral cationic heterocycles with G-quadruplex DNA, which contained human telomeric repeats (GGGTTA)4. One of the porphyrins, pPyTTP, was found to bind to the G-quadruplex DNA and to increase the Tm of the G-quadruplex. The positive sign of induced CD for the complex suggested pPyTTP bound to and stabilized the G-quadruplex DNA possibly by groove binding, distinct from that of TMPyP4.