The State-of-the-art in Improving the Antitumor Efficacy of Platinum Drugs

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the development of personalized medicine within oncology, traditional platinum-based drugs are still difficult to replace, even considering their weaknesses. However, we can try to improve them with more suitable pharmacological properties. This goal can only be achieved with an approach that is multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary at the same time.

The aim of this Special Issue is precisely to stimulate a dialogue between different disciplines to collect new ideas and suggestions from diverse areas of science, independently from the classification of new drugs. In this spirit ‘Pharmaceutics’ and ‘Molecules’ reached a unanimous decision to create a joint Special Issue titled “The State-of-the-art in Improving the Antitumor Efficacy of Platinum Drugs”. The unifying goal of the Special Issue is contained within these words: to share ideas, positive experiences, and (why not?) failures showing the ability of platinum-based anticancer agents to kill cancer cells with biological mechanisms that are different from those used by the reference drug cisplatin, to bypass chemoresistance, to be activated preferentially at the tumor site only, to be delivered more selectively to the final target, and to have a final target that is not only DNA. These are just some suggestions, but they are not binding. For example, one possible way of improving the antitumor efficacy of platinum drugs is… not to use platinum! For this reason, candidate drugs containing metals aside from platinum are also welcome. Original or review articles concerning the above-said topics and studies on computer-aided drug design, in silico studies, drug repurposing, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics are greatly encouraged.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Molecules.

Prof. Dr. Mauro Ravera
Dr. Elisabetta Gabano
Guest Editors

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• bioinorganic chemistry
• metal-based drugs
• pt coordination compounds
• pharmacodynamics
• pharmacokinetics