RSC Medicinal Chemistry Blog

The majority of therapeutics clinically available for cancer treatment are platinum-based and work via a DNA alkylation mechanism that leads to cell apoptosis.  But a number of cancers are resistant to apoptosis and not treatable with platinum-based drugs.

In this paper Peter Sadler (University of Warwick), Steve Shnyder (University of Bradford) and teams have developed an organometallic half-sandwich osmium complex that displays significant anti-cancer activity with negligible toxicity in vivo. Osmium is also a platinum group metal but has a completely different mode of action and appears to operate via redox mechanisms – making these complexes candidates for further investigation and potentially clinical trials.

Read more about this exciting find here – the article is currently free to access:

Anti-colorectal cancer activity of an organometallic osmium arene azopyridine complex
Steve D. Shnyder, Ying Fu, Abraha Habtemariam, Sabine H. van Rijt, Patricia A. Cooper, Paul M. Loadman and Peter J. Sadler
Med. Chem. Commun., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1MD00075F