A new therapeutic perspective for metal-based drugs

Abstract

Metal-based drugs have been at the forefront of research and development in laboratories around the world for several decades. Within the area of Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry, many potential pharmaceutics have been obtained and evaluated, with some notable examples making them all the way into therapy. In this perspective article we discuss notable examples of metal-based drugs and their mechanism of action. These mechanisms are predicated on properties unique to coordination compounds, making them relevant to their evaluation as therapeutics for many diseases. Herein we discuss our research as an example of the design, structural features and biological evaluation of these type of compounds. We present a proposal of the mechanism of action based on a series of experimental and computational studies from our most active compounds, in an effort to highlight the potential of metal complexes of small molecules into the development of accessible treatments for infectious diseases