Abstract
The search for anticancer metal-based drugs alternative to platinum derivatives could not exclude zinc derivatives due to the importance of this metal for the correct functioning of the human body. Zinc, the second most abundant trace element in the human body, is one of the most important micro-elements essential for human physiology. Its ubiquity in thousands of proteins and enzymes is related to its chemical features, in particular its lack of redox activity and its ability to support different coordination geometries and to promote fast ligands exchange. Analogously to other trace elements, the impairment of its homeostasis can lead to various diseases and in some cases can be also related to cancer development. However, in addition to its physiological role, zinc can have beneficial therapeutic and preventive effects on infectious diseases and, compared to other metal-based drugs, Zn(II) complexes generally exert lower toxicity and offer few side effects. Zinc derivatives have been proposed as antitumor agents and, among the great number of zinc coordination complexes which have been described so far, this review focuses on the design, synthesis and biological studies of zinc complexes comprising N-donor ligands and that have been reported within the last five years.
Highlights
Zinc is among the few transition metals, namely Mn, Fe, Co, Cu, Zn and Mo, which, together with the first and second series metals Na, K, mg and Ca, are essential for human physiology.In the human body, zinc, after iron, is the second most abundant trace element
Zinc derivatives have been proposed as antitumor agents and, among the great number of zinc coordination complexes which have been described so far, this review focuses on the design, synthesis and biological studies of zinc complexes comprising N-donor ligands and that have been reported within the last five years
Notwithstanding our choice to survey only Zn complexes containing N-donor ligands, the high number of papers published in this restricted field in the last five years evidences the high vitality of the research on this topic
Summary
Zinc is among the few transition metals, namely Mn, Fe, Co, Cu, Zn and Mo, which, together with the first and second series metals Na, K, mg and Ca, are essential for human physiology. Examples of the detrimental effects of both excess or depletion of Zn in tumoral pathologies have been faced with opposite approaches: on one hand a chelation therapy approach based on depletion of excess cellular Zn by the use of suitable chelating ligands [44,45], on the other hand the use of ionophore systems such as clioquinol [46] Another approach consists in using zinc complexes as metal-based antitumor drugs. The analysis of mechanistic details exceeds the scopes of this review
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