Drug Targeting and Delivery of Platinum Chemotherapeutics ☆

Bioinorganic Chemistry has emerged as a new field of research after the serendipitous discovery of Cisplatin by Rosenberg in 1962. Because of its wide application, Cisplatin resembles for cancer what has been Penicillin for infectious diseases. The field of metallo-drugs has also developed as nanomaterial/composite materials. These new devices have shown great potential in drug delivery with different prospects in diagnosis and therapy. The focus of this article is on drug targeting and delivery (DTD): a highly active field of research aiming to the development of drugs that can go straight to their biological target as a “magic bullet.” Tumor-selective platinum drugs could be administered at lower doses with fewer side effects and higher therapeutic index. Various DTD strategies have been developed over the years; they can be categorized into two groups: active and passive strategies. Active DTD is realized through specific molecular interactions between the drug and cell or tissue elements, while passive DTD is achieved by exploiting the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect occurring in tumor tissues. There is hope that the great effort made in this field will soon result in the approval of new platinum-based devices far more specific and/or active than Cisplatin.