Archimedean heterologous helixes in Ti10Cd6-oxo nanoclusters: double-helical self-assembly and therapeutic application in Parkinson's disease

Abstract

The construction of spiral nanostructures has been a long and challenging pursuit. Herein, we report a helical cadmium doping titanium-oxo cluster (Ti₁₀Cd₆), which can be extracted from Archimedean spiral curves using the equation r = 1 + 1.5θ (θ = 0–350°). A heterologous helix as the building block is further assembled into a double-stranded helical superstructure through intra- and inter-strand non-covalent interactions. Furthermore, the enantioseparation of the novel helix was realized through chiral ligand exchange. Moreover, biological application of the enantiomer R-/S-Ti₁₀Cd₆ was studied, and the results show that R-Ti₁₀Cd₆ significantly ameliorates the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons compared to S-Ti₁₀Cd₆ in a C. elegans model of Parkinson's disease, suggesting an important role of chirality in biomedical applications of metal-oxo clusters.