Fluorinated-NHC Transition Metal Complexes: Leading Characters as Potential Anticancer Metallodrugs

Abstract

In the last 20 years, N-Heterocyclic Carbene (NHC) ligands have been ubiquitous in biological and medicinal chemistry. Part of their success lies in the tremendous number of topologies that can be synthesized and thus finely tuned that have been described so far. This is particularly true in the case of those derivatives, including fluorine or fluorinated fragments on their NHC moieties, gaining much attention due to their enhanced biological properties and turning them into excellent candidates for the development of novel metallodrugs. Thus, this review summarizes the development that fluorinated-NHC transition metal complexes have had and their impact on cancer treatment.

Keywords: Cytotoxicity; N-heterocyclic Carbene (NHC); NHC complexes; cancer; fluorinated complexes; fluorine; metallodrugs.