On the medicinal chemistry of ferrocene

Abstract

Organometallic chemistry and biochemistry have been merged in the last two decades into a new field: bioorganometallic chemistry. This new research area was devoted to the synthesis of new organometallic compounds and their biological and medical effects against some types of diseases, such as cancer and malaria. For several years, the use of ferrocene in bioorganometallic chemistry has been growing rapidly, and several promising applications have been developed since ferrocene is a stable, nontoxic compound and has good redox properties. This review will focus on ferrocenyl compounds which have been biologically evaluated against certain diseases. This area has attracted many researchers due to the promising results of some ferrocene compounds in the medicinal applications.

Síntese de heterociclos bioativos derivados do ferroceno

“…Alguns fármacos conhecidos utilizados contra a malária são a cloroquina, mefloquina e quinina. 48,49 O mosquito Plasmodium falciparum se tornou resistente a esses fármacos. Desta forma, a síntese de novos antimaláricos contendo o grupo ferroceno tem atraído muito interesse por parte de pesquisadores.…”

“…O tamoxifeno age, in vivo, como poderoso agente citostático, pois compete pela ligação ao ERα e impede a transcrição de DNA no tumor. 48,62 O tamoxifeno apresenta efeitos indesejáveis, como resistência ao fármaco durante um longo tempo de terapia e não é efetivo contra tumores independentes de hormônios. Uma das formas mais comuns de se tratar o câncer é através da quimioterapia.…”

<strong>Conception, </strong><strong>synthesis, characterization and antimicrobial evaluation of new ferrocene-based derivatives inspired by the bisacodyl lead structure</strong>

“…The use of ferrocene is especially attractive because it is neutral, chemically stable, a nontoxic molecule and can be easily derivatized or functionalized. Several ferrocenyl compounds have been described for their antitumor, antimalarial or antifungal properties [13][14][15].…”

Novel ferrocenyl derivatives exert anti-cancer effect in human lung cancer cells in vitro via inducing G1-phase arrest and senescence

“…It is known that the incorporation of a ferrocene fragment into a molecule of an organic compound often produces unexpected biological activity, likely due to different membrane permeation properties and anomalous metabolism. Many ferrocenyl compounds display interesting cytotoxic, anti-tumor, antimalarial, antifungal and DNAcleaving activities [16,17] . Recently, several new ferrocenyl-…”