Fighting cancer may not be the first thing people think about when they hear the word metal, but a new study shows these compounds have been found to cause cell death in ovarian and colon cancer cells. The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, showed that a range of compounds containing the two transition metals Ruthenium and Osmium, which are found in the same part of the periodic table as precious metals like platinum and gold, could be an effective treatment against the two cancers. The compounds were also effective against ovarian cancer cells, which are resistant to the drug Cisplatin, the most successful transition metal drug, which contains the metal platinum.

 

“Ruthenium and Osmium compounds are showing very high levels of activity against ovarian cancer, which is a significant step forward in the field of medicinal chemistry,” says Patrick McGowan, one of the lead authors of the research from the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds.

 

Sabine H. van Rijt, lead researcher in the laboratory of Professor Peter Sadler in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, says he is excited by the compounds’ features which could enable activity to be switched on and off.

 

Cisplatin was discovered in the 1970s and is one of the most effective cancer drugs on the market, with a 95 percent cure rate against testicular cancer. Since the success of Cisplatin, chemists all over the world have been trying to discover whether other transition metal compounds can be used to treat cancer. In this type of anti-cancer drug transition, metal atoms bind to DNA molecules, which trigger apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in the cancerous cells.