HISTOLOGY AND HISTOPATHOLOGY

Cellular and Molecular Biology

 

Review

Gold complexes as prospective metal-based anticancer drugs

V. Milacic1, D. Fregona2 and Q.P. Dou1

1The Prevention Program, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and 2Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.

Offprint requests to: Q. Ping Dou, The Prevention Program, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Wayne state University, 640.1, HWCR, 4100 John R Rd, Detroit, Michigan 48201, USA. e-mail: doup@karmanos.org


Summary. Medical and therapeutic value of gold has been recognized thousands of years ago, but its rational use in medicine has not begun until the early 1920s. Cisplatin is one of the first metal-containing compounds with anti-cancer activity discovered in the 1960s. Despite the fact that cisplatin treatment is efficient for several types of solid tumors, its effectiveness is limited by toxic side effects and tumor resistance that often leads to the occurrence of secondary malignancies. Since gold(III) is isoelectronic with platinum(II) and tetracoordinate gold(III) complexes have the same square-planar geometries as cisplatin, the anticancer activity of gold(III) compounds has been investigated. Previous studies suggested that, in contrast to cisplatin, gold complexes target proteins but not DNA. Recently, we have investigated gold(III) dithiocarbamates for their anticancer activity and showed that their primary target is the proteasome. Treatment of human breast tumor-bearing nude mice with a gold(III) dithiocarbamate complex resulted in significant inhibition of tumor growth, associated with proteasome inhibition and massive apoptosis induction in vivo. Better understanding of physiological processing of gold compounds will provide a rational basis for their further development into novel anticancer drugs. Histol Histopathol 23, 101-108 (2007)

Key words: Metal-based drugs, Gold complexes, Anti-cancer drugs

DOI: 10.14670/HH-23.101