Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cisplatin

Cancer is a type of disease and it is characterized my unregulated cell growth and the spreading of cells from site of origin to other parts of the body. There are over 100 types of cancer.[1] It is reported that Ireland has one of the highest rates of cancer in Europe, with females ranking 5th and males 8th out of 27 EU countries. This is in contrast to cancers mortality rate in Ireland, with women in 6th and males in 21st. however incidents of tumours continue to rise by 3% annually.[2] Cancer is a multibillion euro industry, there are 27 Institutes and centres that form the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is one of these and its budget for cancer research is 4.9 billion dollars per annum[3]. This shows the interest the world has in finding new, safer and more effective anticancer agents and treatment methods, with negligible side

only 13 of these have experienced clinical trials[10]. The most promising are carboplatin and oxaliplatin. Second and third analogues of cisplatin were designed in order to decrease its toxicity towards healthy cells whilst retaining its anti-proliferative activity (Figure 2). They have similar features to cisplatin, namely its platinum ion at the centre. The second generation analogue is carboplatin this is much less reactive than cisplatin and shows less toxicity. a drawback would be that it is administered intravenously and acts on the same tumour range as cisplatin.[11] It has lessened side effects could be due to the bidentate carboxylate in place of the two chloride ions. The bidentate carboxylate ligand undergoes hydrolysis much slower than the chlorides, it undergoes a double hydration prior to interaction with DNA[12] This would result in a slower reactivity towards the molecules that are contesting with the final biological target