Phosphoroorganic Metal Complexes in Therapeutics

The present mini-review highlights recent developments on antitumor activity of metal-based therapeutics which have been a subject of researches for the last few decades. In 1965, Rosenberg found that during an electrolysis on platinum electrodes a complex of Pt is generated which inhibited to a great extent a binary fission in Escherichia coli bacteria. This discovery started a new chapter in medicinal chemistry and the interesting properties of cisplatin were soon applied in cancer therapy especially in curing genitourinary tumors. However, various side effects limited its use in medical treatment. Since then a great number of other metal-organic complexes based on platinum, palladium, ruthenium, gold, copper, silver, rhodium, osmium, rhenium, iridium and others have been synthesized. Among them, NAMI-A and KP1019 have recently undergone clinical trials. In this review paper we report a detailed account of metal complexes with phosphorus-based ligands which are of particular interest in therapeutics.