Engineering of pectin-dopamine nano-conjugates for carrying ruthenium complex: A potential tool for biomedical applications

In this work, we designed polysaccharide-metal complex of dopamine-modified pectin linking ruthenium compound, which exhibited a certain inhibition specificity to human renal cell adenocarcinoma cell line 786-O. The chemical structure and physical properties of the polysaccharide-metal complex were well characterized by multiple analysis methods. The multi-spectral results revealed that pectin-dopamine have been successfully coordinated by ruthenium complex to form nano-conjugates, which self-assembled into relatively regular nanospheres of approximately 200 nm. The polysaccharide-metal complex has more amorphous and less viscosity than pectin, and cannot withstand as much strain as the pectin and pectin-dopamine systems. Pectin-dopamine can decrease the toxicity effect of Ru complex in normal cell line such as human normal renal epithelial cell line 293A.