Towards Substitutionally-Inert Ru(II) Complexes as Photoactivatable Anticancer Agents

The severe side effects encountered with platinum-based anticancer agents has driven the pursuit of new metal-based chemotherapeutics. The best examples of these are ruthenium compounds which have shown a promising potential to circumvent these side effects on account of their broad antiproliferative profile and novel mechanistic of action against cancer cells. Our work aims at the development of substitutionally inert Ru(II)-tris(diimine) complexes as new anticancer agents. Here we present the anticancer action and cytotoxicity mechanism of a Ru(dppz)2(CppH) cells [3]. The reported findings represent a major advancement towards achieving a site-directed spatially and temporally controlled anti-cancer activity from such metallo cytotoxics.

References
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[2] T. Joshi, V. Pierroz, S. Ferrari, G. Gasser ChemMedChem 9 (2014) 1419–1427.
[3] T. Joshi, V. Pierroz, C. Mari, L. Gemperle, S. Ferrari, G. Gasser Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53 (2014) 2960–2963.