Platinum-based cancer chemotherapeutics: Recent trends and future perspectives

Platinum-based drugs have been proved as one of the prevalent successes in the field of inorganic medicinal chemistry. So far, three generations of platinum-based drugs are in the market and are recognized to play critical roles in the treatment of various types of tumors. The most commonly used anticancer chemotherapeutics worldwide are particularly cisplatin, oxaliplatin, and carboplatin. They are known to exhibit prominent and interesting chemo-therapeutic effects. Nevertheless, Pt chemotherapy can be limited in transformative clinical implementation owing to the severe side effects triggered by off-target activity and lowered efficacy because of acquired/intrinsic resistance in some cancer types. Incidentally, monofunctional Pt complexes, those bearing one labile ligand, initially studied in the late 1980s, are again enticing renewed attention. in comparison to the bifunctional anticancer complexes, bearing two labile ligands, viz., cisplatin which creates a distortion in the DNA strands by forming inter-and intrastrand crosslinks, monofunctional Pt(II) complexes were found to exclusively bind to DNA via a solo coordination site revealed by the one leaving chloride group. However, till date, no other non-platinum metal-based anticancer drug has been able to efficaciously pass all stages of clinical trials. Hence, the hunt for novel Pt-based anticancer drug is being pursued vigorously for the reason that they still play a principal role in the chemotherapeutic profiles of almost 50% of all cancer patients. Meanwhile, the major significant goals in the search for new Pt chemotherapeutic drugs is to focus- a) on exploiting their potential, b) averting the undesirable side effects, c) in curing resistant tumors, and d) in refining the cellular pharmacokinetic regimes. This mini review highlights the numerous continuing efforts to produce the next generation of Pt anticancer drugs.