The complexation behavior of octadentate 3,4,3-LI-1,2-HOPO with U(Ⅵ) is similar to that of 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO), forming 1:1 metal: ligand complexes with a stability constant of log
β110 = 18.0(4) [
80]. The main species found at pH 7.4 is the deprotonated stoichiometric complex [UO
2(L)]
2−. The planar hexadentate ligand is predicted to be perfectly matching the coordination environment of uranyl, however, the decorporation efficacy of planar hexadentate ligand is not reported yet [
114]. Raymond
et al. has reported that the toxicity of these tetradentate hydroxypyridinone ligands vary with the alteration of the linker and the toxicity increases in the trend of C
4 > C
3 > C
6 > C
5. Among those linkers, 5LIO scaffold (-CH
2CH
2OCH
2CH
2-, 5LIO-) was determined to be the least toxic one [
115]. Eventually, two ligands of 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) and 3,4,3-LI(1,2-HOPO) were screened out as the optimal chelators for uranyl. 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) and 3,4,3-LI(1,2-HOPO) yielded 84.4% and 81.1% uranium removal efficiency in the kidneys with the intraperitoneal (ip) injection of ligand 3 min after the iv injection of U(Ⅵ), as illustrated in
Table 4. However, prolonged treatment of 48 h resulted in a decrease of efficiency to 38.8% for 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO). Both ligands were also orally active and 43.5% of uranium was eliminated from the kidneys in the mice by oral treatment with 100 µmol/kg 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) and 3,4,3-LI(1,2-HOPO) 3 min after iv injection of U(Ⅵ) [
35,
108]. The only drawback of the two ligands is their limited uranyl decorporation in bones. This is partially because of the presence of intramolecular hydrogen bonds within those two ligands that have been designed to improve the ligand rigidity and promote the deprotonation of the ligand under physiological conditions so that stronger Coulomb interaction can be achieved between negatively charged ligand and positively charged uranyl ions, similar as discussed in the Pu decorporation section. However, strong intramolecular hydrogen bonds would weaken the binding affinity with uranyl from a thermodynamic perspective, which results in reduced formation constants values. To overcome this obstacle, Wang
et al. introduced a new uranium chelator (5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO), in which the strength of intramolecular hydrogen bonds are reduced due to the presence of an additional methyl group between the amide and HOPO groups [
116]. The stability constants of the uranyl and 5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO complexes were determined to be log
β111 = 24.8(7), log
β110 = 18.6(7), and log
β11–1 = 7.5(7), much higher than those of 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) (
Table 4). DFT calculation results further elucidate the lower binding energy of UO
2–5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO (−9.23/−9.21 eV) in comparison to that of UO
2–5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) (−8.81 eV). Comprehensive cytotoxicity studies show that the cytotoxicity of 5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO is at the same level as ZnNa
3-DTPA, but much lower than that of 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO). Moreover, 5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO achieved high U(Ⅵ) removal efficiencies of 86.8% and 47.9% in the kidneys and femurs, respectively, which is six times higher than the removal efficiency in the femurs of 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) (8.0%). Similarly, in oral administration, 5LIO-1-Cm-3,2-HOPO exhibited a much higher U(Ⅵ) removal ratio in femurs of 30.5% than 5-LIO-(Me-3,2-HOPO) (3.5%), while their U(Ⅵ) removal percentages in kidneys were similar.