Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 17, Issue 31, 2010

Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry is an area of growing interest. Metal compounds have demonstrated their participation in biological processes and their significance in both therapeutic and diagnostic medicine. Bioactivity of many organic drugs is dependent on the presence of metal ions in the biological media. Moreover, coordination of pharmacologically interesting metal ions to suitable ligands constitutes a tool to modulate bi Read More

Transitional metals have a large variety of coordination numbers and geometries, accessible redox states in physiological conditions and a wide range of thermodynamic and reactivity properties which can be successfully tuned by selection of suitable ligands. These characteristics can be used to develop new drugs with numerous advantages over the organic based drugs. Historically, research in this field has focus on plati Read More

Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry offers the high diversity of metal coordination chemistry for the development of bioactive compounds for therapeutic or diagnostic medicinal purposes. The design of novel metal-based antitumor agents occupies a privileged position in this discovery process. On the other hand, the research on metal-based radiopharmaceuticals for therapy and imaging is a subarea of high priority an Read More

Vanadium is a trace element present in practically all cells in plants and animals. While the essentiality of vanadium for human beings remains to be well established, vanadium has become an increasingly important environmental metal. Vanadium compounds exert a variety of biological activities and responses. At pharmacological doses, vanadium compounds display relevant biological actions such as insulin and growth Read More

The discovery of the involvement of nitric oxide (NO) in several physiological and pathophysiological processes launched a spectacular increase in studies in areas such as chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology. As a consequence, the development of NO donors or scavengers for regulation of its concentration and bioavailability in vivo is required. In this sense, ruthenium nitrosyl ammines and aliphatic tetraazamac Read More

Chelation therapy occupies a central place in modern medicine and pharmacology, because continuous studies with laboratory animals and extensive clinical experience demonstrate that acute or chronic intoxications with a variety of metals can be considerable improved by administration of a suitable chelating agent. In this review the chemical characteristics, properties and uses of the most common chelati Read More

Radiometals have become increasingly important because of their use both for diagnostic molecular imaging and therapy in Nuclear Medicine. The focus is on the study of biochemical processes at cellular and sub-cellular level in order to detect metabolic abnormalities associated with various diseases. For that purpose, molecules that selectively accumulate in the organ or tissue of interest by a specific mechanism such as rec Read More

The role of MRI in the armory of diagnostic modalities for the medicine of the forthcoming years largely depends on how chemistry will provide advanced tools to meet the medical needs. This review aims at outlining the most innovative approaches that have been undertaken in the recent history of MRI contrast agents for tackling the challenges of sensitivity and specificity required by the new generation of contrast agents Read More

Low molecular weight and high molecular weight metal ion binders present in blood plasma are shortly described. The binding of vanadium and ruthenium complexes by these components has received much attention, namely their interactions with human serum albumin and transferrin, and these studies are critically reviewed. The influence of the protein binding on the bioavailability of the prospective drugs, namely on the tr Read More

Although more complex than usually described, the anticancer action mechanism of cisplatin is based on binding to DNA. Following this line of reasoning, most the metal-based compounds discovered soon after cisplatin were designed to acting as DNA-binding agents and their pharmacological properties were thought to be correlated with this mechanism. Apart from the DNA structure, a significant number of p Read More

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), also known as matrixins, belong to a group of zinc-dependent proteins, which are thought to play a central role in the breakdown of extracellular matrix. Collagen, elastin, gelatin and casein are major components cleaved by MMPs. The breakdown of these components is essential for many physiological processes such as embryonic development, morphogenesis, reproduction, and tissue res Read More