In the course of studies on bleomycin, we recently showed that the bithiazole ring is a poor intercalator into DNA. Therefore we have designed new models, replacing this heterocyclic moiety by an anilinoacridine ring in order to increase the affinity for DNA. This work presents results obtained for two model compounds showing (i) that the anilinoacridine nucleus leads to a good stabilization of the DNA helix, and (ii) that the presence of a bulky group near the complexing part of bleomycin is essential to the activation of molecular oxygen.