Tanja Soldatovic

By Tanja Soldatović

Over the past few decades, transition metal complexes have attracted considerable attention in medicinal inorganic chemistry, especially as synthetic metallonucleases and metal-based anticancer drugs that are able to bind to DNA under physiological conditions. The use of metal-based drugs presents the most important strategy in the development of new anticancer and antimicrobial agents. Negative side effects during treatment (such as vomiting, resistance, nephrotoxicity, ototoxicity, neurotoxicity and cardiotoxicity) prompted researchers to design new classes of DNA and protein targeting metal-based anticancer agents with potential in vitro selectivity and less toxicity. Knowledge of mechanism of the interaction zinc(II) and copper (II) ions with biomolecules and other relevant ligands is essential for understanding the cellular biology of delivery complexes to DNA and proteins. Results obtained from investigations provide useful information for the future design of potential zinc- and copper-based anticancer drugs. Different mechanism of interactions with selected biomolecules compared to platinum-based drugs has been observed.

Part of the book: Basic Concepts Viewed from Frontier in Inorganic Coordination Chemistry

By Tanja Soldatović

Substitution reactions are a type of reactions where one functional group or ligand is substituted by another. They could be electrophilic or nucleophilic, depending upon whether the reagent is involved. Complex compounds could be involved in a number of substitution reactions such as ligand exchange, solvent exchange, complexation or anation reactions, solvolysis, acid and base hydrolysis, inter- and intramolecular isomerization, racemization, and metal ion reaction. Hard-soft acid–base principle (HSAB) contributes to better understanding of the mechanism of nucleophilic substitution reactions of transition metal complexes. Metal–ligand bonds in transition metal compounds are closely related to the HSAB nature of metals and their preferred ligands. Also, the principle is qualitatively useful to predict the preference of the metal for the ligand in bioinorganic reactions.

Part of the book: Photophysics, Photochemical and Substitution Reactions