Transition Metal Complexes as Potential Metallodrugs: Exploring the Solution Behaviour and Anticancer Activities

Abstract

Despite the development of thousands of anticancer drugs, cancer is still a major cause of death worldwide. The main problem in the treatment of cancer is drug resistance from long-term treatment and the adverse side effects of the drugs along with non-specific toxicity. Therefore, there is a constant search for new compounds with potential anticancer effects. Again, for the design and evaluation of the action mechanism of new metallodrugs, the transport in the bloodstream and the binding to cellular targets are the key steps. Serum albumin proteins tend to increase the solubility of hydrophobic compounds in plasma and regulate their delivery to target cells. Also, DNA is the primary target of many metal-based anticancer drugs and metal complexes may bind to it leading to alteration and/or inhibition of its functioning. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the biomolecular interaction of compounds. Over again, considerable attention is paid toward the possible transformation of the designed metal-based drugs in aqueous solution. But the knowledge of the mechanisms of cell death and the relationship between chemical structure and biological activity may be useful for the design of new metalbased drugs with promising pharmacologic applications. On the other hand, luminescent compounds derived from main group elements have been proven to have significant potential in the fields of photonics, bioimaging, and optoelectronics. Over the past few years, we have been working in the field of coordination chemistry incorporating mono- and dibasic ligand systems in relation to their biological activities. In this presentation I will focus on some of our recent interesting results1-9 on some transition and main group metal complexes (V, Mo, Ru & Sn) with their biomolecular interaction, bioimaging and anticancer activity.