Owing to the increasing
importance of manganese(II) complexes in
the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), large efforts have
been devoted to find an appropriate ligand for Mn(II) ion encapsulation
by providing balance between the seemingly contradictory requirements
(i.e., thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness vs low ligand
denticity enabling water molecule(s) to be coordinated in its metal
center). Among these ligands, a large number of pyridine or pyridol
based open-chain and macrocyclic chelators have been investigated
so far. As a next step in the development of these chelators, 15-pyN3O2Ph and its transition metal complexes were synthesized
and characterized using established methods. The 15-pyN3O2Ph ligand incorporates both pyridine and ortho-phenylene units to decrease ligand flexibility. The thermodynamic
properties, protonation and stability constants, were determined using
pH-potentiometry; the solid-state structures of two protonation states
of the free ligand and its manganese complex were obtained by single
crystal X-ray diffractometry. The results show a seven-coordinate
metal center with two water molecules in the first coordination sphere.
The longitudinal relaxivity of [Mn(15-pyN3O2Ph)]2+ was found to be 5.16 mM–1 s–1 at 0.49 T (298 K). Furthermore, the r
2p value of 11.72 mM–1 s–1 (0.49 T), which is doubled at 1.41 T field, suggests that design
of this Mn(II) complex does achieve some characteristics required
for contrast imaging. In addition, 17O NMR measurements
were performed in order to access the microscopic parameters governing
this key feature (e.g., water exchange rate). Finally, manganese complexes
of ligands with analogous polyaza macrocyclic scaffold have been investigated
as low molecular weight Mn(CAT) mimics. Here, we report the H2O2 disproportionation study of [Mn(15-pyN3O2Ph)]2+ to demonstrate the versatility of
this ligand scaffold as well.