Multi-nuclear NMR and ESI-MS have been applied to study the interactions between oxalato-oxodiperoxovanadate and histidine in neutral solution. Coordination between the complex and histidine was monitored by V-51 NMR. A pair of new isomers produced via vanadium atom binding separately to N1 and N3 of the imidazole ring of histidine was characterized by several spectroscopic methods. Experimental results show that the structure activity relationship of peroxovanadium complexes bearing organic ligands may be related to the specific recognition between peroxovanadium and histidine residue of tyrosine phosphatase.