Organometallic Compounds Have Exciting Anticancer Potential

Cancer researchers have found that certain organometallic compounds have the potential to be developed into potent anticancer therapeutic agents.

Investigators at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) worked with a series of ruthenium arene complexes. They found that these complexes were highly cytotoxic to human ovarian A2780 and lung A549 cancer cells. Fluorescence-trapping experiments in A549 cells suggested that the cytotoxicity arose from an increase in reactive oxygen species.

The ruthenium complexes acted as catalysts in reactions with tripeptide glutathione, a strong reducing agent present in cells at millimolar concentrations, and millimolar amounts of glutathione were oxidized to glutathione disulfide in the presence of micromolar ruthenium concentrations. These findings were published in the August 7, 2008, online edition of the Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Senior author Dr. Peter Sadler, professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick explained, "We know oxidants produce free radicals that damage cells. Our experiments show ruthenium produces a reaction in the cell that destroys its anti-oxidant defense glutathione – thus destroying the cancer-infected cell.”

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