Activating Platinum Anticancer Complexes with Visible Light

摘要

The platinum anticancer drugs cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin are currently very successful in the clinic: they are used to treat 40-80% of all cancer patients. The sales of oxaliplatin alone are expected to reach US$3 billion in total within the next 2 years. Despite this success, there are good reasons to attempt to improve their design. These existing platinum drugs are not active against all types of cancer, they can have adverse side effects, and resistance to therapy can develop. If relatively nontoxic platinum complexes could be designed that could be selectively activated in tumor cells, they might find widespread use in the clinic. The report by Sadler and co-workers of complexes with these characteristics is therefore notable.