Cancer therapy candidate is viable organic semiconductor

The researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report their findings in Nature Communications.

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Organic semiconductors have enabled flexible electronics and transparent solar cells, but researchers are working to expand their use in biomedicine and devices requiring interaction between electrically active molecules and biological molecules.

To this end chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying Diao, who is conducting research into pharmaceutical development and printable electronics, found that a well-studied bioactive molecule contains semiconductor-like features.

The molecule, which inserts itself into DNA to prevent replication, was once explored as a potential anti-cancer agent.

"While examining these pharmaceutical molecules, we noticed that their molecular structures looked much like the organic semiconductors we were working with in the rest of my group,” Diao said in a statement.

The molecules - DNA topoisomerase inhibitors - are flat and contain neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive molecular rings, making them a viable as a semiconductor material.