Platinum (Pt) analogues Essay -- Health, Diseases, Tumors, Cancer

Platinum (Pt) analogues are now among the clinically used most efficacious metal-based drugs in the treatment of a variety of tumors/cancers including lung cancer (both non-small cell and small cell), head and neck cancer, bladder cancer, ovarian cancer, germ cell tumors and, to a lesser extent, breast cancer and gastric cancer [1,2]. However, here the drug action is less- / non-selective, and normal cells, in addition to transformed cells, are also affected, which leads to substantial dose-limiting acute and chronic toxicities [3, 4]. It is generally believed that non-Pt metal-based drugs offer potential to overcome these shortcomings [5]. Complexes of metals such as palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, copper and lanthanum, with aromatic N-containing ligands (pyridine, imidazole and 1,10-phenanthroline, and their derivatives), have shown promising cytotoxic properties in in vitro and in vivo models [6-10]. Among non-Pt compounds, copper complexes are potentially attractive as anticancer agents. Actually, since many years a lot of researches have actively investigated copper compounds b...