Periphery Decorated and Core Initiated Neutral and Polyanionic Borane Large Molecules: Forthcoming and Promising Properties for Medicinal Applications

A mini-review based on radial growing macromolecules and core initiated Borane periphery decorated with o-carboranes and metallacarboranes that has been developed in the authors laboratories is reported. The review is divided into four sections; three of them are related to the design and synthesis of these large boron-containing molecules and the fourth deals with the unique properties of anionic metallacarborane molecules that provide a glimpse of their potential for their promising use in medicinal applications. Their unique stability along with their geometrical and electronic properties, as well as the precise steric structure of 1,2-closo-C2B10H12 (o-carborane) that has the potential for the incorporation of many substituents: at the carbon (Cc), at the boron and at both carbon and boron vertices, suggests this cluster as an innovative building block or platform for novel applications that cannot be achieved with organic hydrocarbon compounds. Poly(aryl-ether) dendrimers grown from fluorescent cores, such as 1,3,5-triarylbenzene or meso-porphyrins, have been decorated with boron clusters to attain rich boron containing dendrimers. Octasilsesquioxane cubes have been used as a core for its radial growth to get boron-rich large molecules. The unique properties of cobaltabisdicarbollide cluster, which include: i) self-assembly in water to produce monolayer nano-vesicles, ii) crossing lipid bilayer membranes, iii) interacting with membrane cells, iv) facilitating its visualization within cells by Raman and fluorescence techniques and v) their use as molecular platform for “in vivo” imaging are discussed in detail.