Non-innocent ligands in copper complexes catalyzed oxidation of thiols

Copper(II) chloride complexes with nitrogen-containing ligands (amines, amides, heterocycles) were studied as catalysts of selective oxidation of thiols to disulfides. This process has an important biochemical analogue - the formation of disulfide bridge in proteins [Wang C, Wesener SR, Zhang H, Cheng Y-Q. An FAD-dependent pyridine nucleotide-disulfide oxidoreductase is involved in disulfide bond formation in FK228 anticancer depsipeptide. Chem and Biol. 2009;16:585-593]; which affects their activity [Zhang L, Chou CP, Moo-Young M. Disulfide bond formation and its impact on the biological activity and stability of recombinant therapeutic proteins produced by Escherichia coli expression system. Biotech Adv. 2011;29:923-929]. Also, thiol oxidation is an important process of oil sweetening. The search for effective and stable catalysts for this reaction is still topical [Ganguly SK, Das G, Kumar S, Sain B, Garg MO. Mechanistic kinetics of catalytic oxidation of 1-butanethiol in light oil sweetening. Catal Tod. 2012;198:246-251]. This article describes a mechanistic study of thiol oxidation and non-innocent ligands transformations during this reaction. The studied ligands are capable of oxidizing thiols, the reaction being followed by reoxidation of the reduced forms of the ligands with air oxygen. The oxidative activity of the ligand correlates with catalyst activity for thiol oxidation.