Cisplatin is a very effective antitumor drug, but highly toxic. Thus, thousands of transition metal complexes have been prepared in an effort to improve upon the selectivity and the therapeutic index, with less toxicity. Among the transition metals, one of the most promising is ruthenium, due to its selectivity for tumour cells and lower toxicity. Based on these findings ruthenium complexes have been synthesized in our laboratory, which have presented good activities against a variety of tumour cells. The present study reports the synthesis of new ruthenium complexes, [Ru(AA)(bipy)(dppb)]PF6 (AA = aminoacids;bipy = 2,2`-bipyridine or its derivatives; dppb = 1,4-bis(diphenylphosphino)butane), their cytotoxicity and the mechanism of cell death induction in MDA-MB-231. The cytotoxic activities of the ruthenium(II) compounds were measured by a 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The IC50 data obtained for the complexes were lower than the values obtained for the cisplatin, showing their promising as antitumor drugs.

Antitumor activity of ruthenium/aminoacids/diphosphine complexes

245th National Meeting (2013)

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