Front Cover: Indenyl and Allyl Palladate Complexes Bearing N‐Heterocyclic Carbene Ligands: an Easily Accessible Class of New Anticancer Drug Candidates (Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. 16/2022)

Abstract

The Front Cover shows novel allyl and indenyl palladates with a promising biological activity. A wide range of these peculiar Pd(II) derivatives were prepared by a solvent‐free method consisting of grinding the corresponding Pd precursors with different azolium salts. These complexes are stable in chlorinated and polar solvents, and most of them showed excellent cytotoxicity towards ovarian cancer cell lines. Interestingly, the potent anticancer activity was also confirmed in a high‐grade serous ovarian cancer patient‐derived tumoroid, with a clear superiority of this class of compounds over classical platinum‐based agents. Finally, preliminary enzyme inhibition studies of the Pd(II) complexes against the model TrxR show that the compounds have high activity comparable to or even higher than those of auranofin and classical gold(I)‐NHC complexes. More information can be found in the Research Article by T. Scattolin, F. Visesntin, S. P. Nolan and co‐workers.