In the compounds from family 1 the nucleobase moiety was introduced as one of the bridging thiols The introduction of nucleobase units on the trithiolato diruthenium scaffold using this method presented important limitations. In reactions run with 6-thioguanine, 8-mercaptoadenine and 2-thiobarbituric acid, the poor solubility of the thiols in refluxing EtOH led to poor conversions and important difficulties in the recovery of the pure product. Compounds 11 and 12 still contained traces of impurities and their biological activity was not assessed.