1.D.302. The Naphthalene Diimine Chloride Channel (NDCC) Family
Metallacage-based ion channels have well-defined structures and can exist as single components in the phospholipid bilayer (Ling et al. 2024). A naphthalene diimide-based artificial chloride ion channel has been constructed through efficient subcomponent self-assembly, and its selective ion transport activity in large unilamellar vesicles and the planar lipid bilayer membrane has been followed by fluorescence and ion-current measurements. Molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations show that the metallacage spans the entire phospholipid bilayer as a unimolecular ion transport channel. This channel transports chloride ions across the cell membrane, which disturbs the ion balance of cancer cells and inhibits the growth of cancer cells at low concentrations (Ling et al. 2024).