Target-Specific Delivery of Gold and Ruthenium Complexes to Cancer Cells: Where Are We?

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, and it is expected that in 20 years, there will be ~26 million new cancer cases. Despite the progress made in the last few years, cancer treatment, mainly focused on radiation therapy and chemotherapy, presents low therapeutic indices and a wide spectrum of severe side-effects, in part due to the little or no selectivity of drugs for cancer cells over nontumoral cells. Therefore, the need for alternative therapeutic options with improved selectivity is critical.

Following the clinical success achieved with platinum complexes, the search for metallodrugs with improved therapeutic properties has been extremely active within the bioinorganic/organometallic chemistry community. Among the large number of metal complexes with considerable anticancer properties, gold and ruthenium complexes are amongst the most promising alternatives. Nevertheless, this topic still remains a challenge to all scientists, especially those involved in the design of innovative metal-based target specific agents.

This Special Issue of Molecules welcomes original research articles, communications, and review articles dealing with major advancements and challenges of metallodrug discovery for cancer treatment. It will focus on design, identification, and evaluation of novel gold and ruthenium anticancer agents, biological targets, and targeting approaches.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Molecules.

Dr. Tânia S. Morais
Prof. Dr. João D. G. Correia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Chemistry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.