• Universitat de València
• Fundación INCLIVA

• Gloria Ribas Despuig
• Elena Jiménez Martí
• Sara Oltra Sanchis
• Marta Albanell Fernández
• Marta Orts Arroyo

Cancer is one of the main public health problems, being the second leading cause of death worldwide. Chemotherapy, one of the treatments of choice for tumours, uses drugs that often have high toxicities in healthy tissues, leading to a high number of adverse effects.

Currently, platinum (II)-based anticancer drugs are being used for cancer treatment, but they have significant side effects and their limited water solubility and short shelf life limit their effectiveness and activity against some tumours. It is therefore necessary to search for new, more selective and effective compounds.

Researchers from the Universitat de València together with INCLIVA researchers have developed a mononuclear compound based on ruthenium (III) whose antitumour activity has proved to be selective against cancer cells with respect to healthy cells. This selective action is due to the fact that the complex is based on a specific organic ligand (2,2'-biimidazole) that facilitates its interaction with the DNA of cancer cells. In this way, it has been shown to reduce the proliferation and migration of breast, colon and gastric cancer, with a clear action against breast cancer of the TNA and/or luminal B subtype in particular.

On the other hand, this ruthenium-based compound, compared to existing platinum-based compounds, is more robust and inert when it comes to reacting in biological processes, which gives it high stability, thus extending the useful life of this compound in the physiological environment and enhancing its activity.

The main application of this invention is in the health sector, being of special interest as an anti-tumour agent by considerably reducing tumour proliferation and migration, especially in luminal B breast cancer.

The main advantages provided by the invention are mainly its selective effect against tumour lines with respect to non-tumour lines and its increased stability and shelf life in physiological medium with respect to the currently used platinum-based complexes.

• Patent applied