Congratulations to our Ph.D. students Ester Giorgi and Francesca Binacchi for their scientific publication entitled “Highlights of New Strategies to Increase the Efficacy of Transition Metal Complexes for Cancer Treatments” in Molecules.In this article, two promising strategies to increase the efficacy of transition metal-based complexes were reviewed. First, was considered the possibility of assembling two biologically active fragments containing different metal centres into the same molecule, thus obtaining a heterobimetallic complex.
A critical comparison with the monometallic counterparts was done. The reviewed literature has been divided into two groups: the case of platinum; the case of gold. Secondly, the conjugation of metal-based complexes to a targeting moiety was discussed. Particularly, we highlighted some interesting examples of compounds targeting cancer cell organelles according to a third-order targeting approach, and complexes targeting the whole cancer cell, according to a second-order targeting strategy.
This paper can be freely downloaded at:https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28010273