Frontier of Development for Metallodrugs on the Basis of Metallomic Pharmacology and Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry

Abstract

Biological trace metals (bio-metals) such as iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), and manganese (Mn) are essential to life and health of humans, and the success of platinum (Pt) drugs in the cancer chemotherapy has rapidly grown interest in developing inorganic pharmaceutical agents (metallodrugs) in medicinal chemistry, that is, medicinal inorganic chemistry, using either biologically essential metals or other trace metals with pharmacological functions. Transition metal complexes with unique chemical structures may be useful alternatives to the drug available to address some of the incurable diseases. Over thousand years after ancient people practiced many types of inorganic compounds, modern development of metallopharmaceutics has been achieved by P. Ehrlich and his coworkers, who found arsenic-containing arsphenamine (As) and established the concept of chemotherapy in 1910. Since the year, a wide variety of metallodrugs have been developed by many researchers, and some of them are clinically used worldwide involving cisplatin (Pt), auranofin (Au), and polaprezinc (Zn). In this chapter, we emphasize that metal complexes are an expanding of interest in the research field of treatment of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes mellitus and several cancers. Especially, we would like to review the current state for the research of metal-based nonclinical medicines for treatment of cancer and diabetes mellitus.