Recent Advances in Metal Based Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

 

This Special Issue of IJMS, entitled “Recent Advances in Metal Based Drugs”, will cover a selection of recent research and review articles in the field of metal based drugs. The use of metals in medicine goes back to antiquity, with various elements, such as arsenic, gold, and iron, being used to treat different ailments. Nowadays, the medicinal uses and applications of metals and metal complexes are of increasing clinical and commercial importance. A reasonable estimate of commercial importance is approaching US $5 billion annually for the whole field.

The ability to recognize, to understand at the molecular level, and to treat diseases caused by inadequate metal-ion function constitutes an important aspect of medicinal bioinorganic chemistry. Diseases such as anemia (iron), asthma (gold and magnesium), bipolar disorder (lithium), diabetes (vanadium), rheumatoid arthritis (gold), stroke (magnesium), tropical diseases (antimony and rhodium), and ulcers (bismuth) can be treated by metal-based drugs. Arguably, the most prominent drug that contains a metal is cisplatin, the most widely used anti-cancer drug. The success of cisplatin in chemotherapy has motivated a large number of studies into the potential for other platinum and other metal (like palladium, silver, tin, antimony, etc.) complexes as anti-tumor drugs.

From the foregoing, the reader of this Special Issue will gain an appreciation of the very real roles metal-based drugs play. In modern medicine, the considerable effort being devoted to the development of novel complexes with greater efficacies and reduced toxic side effects (an inevitable consequence of all chemotherapy) will be appreciated.

Prof. Dr. Sotiris Hadjikakou
Prof. Dr. Nick Hadjiliadis
Guest Editors

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