Rubbiani Riccardo, Wahrig Bettina, Ott Ingo
Institute of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Beethovenstraße 55, 38106, Braunschweig, Germany.
J Biol Inorg Chem. 2014 Aug;19(6):961-5. doi: 10.1007/s00775-014-1135-4. Epub 2014 Apr 19.
The medicinal chemistry and biomedical applications of gold complexes have been intensively studied over the last decades. Some complexes have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and a considerable number of new metallodrug candidates have been developed as new anticancer drugs and anti-infectives. However, the therapeutic use of gold and its complexes goes back to ancient times and was also of great importance for alchemists until the modern age. In this report, we give an overview of the alchemic medicine between the sixteenth and the early eighteenth century and describe the cytotoxicity and thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) inhibition of a typical "aurum vitae" medicine, which was prepared according to a recipe by Bartholomäus Kretschmar from the seventeenth century. "Aurum vitae" consists of a mixture of gold, mercury and antimony complexes and shows the expected cytotoxic and TrxR inhibitory properties providing some rationale for therapeutic effects of this kind of historical medicinal preparation.
在过去几十年中，人们对金配合物的药物化学和生物医学应用进行了深入研究。一些配合物已被用于治疗类风湿性关节炎，并且已经开发出相当数量的新型金属药物候选物作为新型抗癌药物和抗感染药物。然而，金及其配合物的治疗用途可追溯到古代，并且在现代之前对炼金术士也非常重要。在本报告中，我们概述了16世纪至18世纪初的炼金术医学，并描述了一种典型的“生命之金”药物的细胞毒性和硫氧还蛋白还原酶（TrxR）抑制作用，该药物是根据17世纪巴托洛梅乌斯·克雷奇马尔的配方制备的。“生命之金”由金、汞和锑配合物的混合物组成，并显示出预期的细胞毒性和TrxR抑制特性，为这种历史药物制剂的治疗效果提供了一些理论依据。
