Metal-based Catalytic Drug Development for Next-generation Cancer Therapy

ChemMedChem. 2021 May 24. doi: 10.1002/cmdc.202100297. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTConsidering the very high increase in mortality caused by cancer in recent years, new cancer drugs with novel anticancer mechanism are of urgent prerequisite for overcoming the drawbacks of platinum-based chemotherapeutics. Very recently, in the area of metal-based cancer drug development research, the concept of catalytic cancer drugs has been introduced with the organometallic Ru(II), Os(II), Rh(III) and Ir(III) complexes. These complexes are reported as catalysts for many important biological transformations in cancer cells such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) oxidation to NAD + , reduction of NAD + to NADH, and reduction of pyruvate to lactate. These unnatural intracellular transformations with catalytic and non-toxic doses of metal complexes are known to severely perturb several important biochemical pathways and could be the antecedent of next generation catalytic cancer drug development. In this concept, we have delineated the prospects of such recently reported organometallic Ru(II), Os(II), Rh(III) and Ir(III) complexes as future catalytic cancer drugs from a critical angle. This new approach has the potential to deliver new cancer drug candidates.PMID:34028190 | DOI:10.1002/cmdc.202100297
Source: ChemMedChem - Category: Chemistry Authors: Source Type: research