Recent advancements of organotin(IV) complexes derived from hydrazone and thiosemicarbazone ligands as potential anticancer agents

Cancer has become a leading cause of death worldwide and different aspects, such as physical, chemical, environmental, and genetic factors can affect the development and growth of cancer. Hence, it is necessary to explore the effective drugs that can efficiently treat cancer. Although cisplatin has been widely studied for its potential as an effective cancer therapy but the exact path of action of this metal compound remains unclear. Due to toxicity and resistance issues of platinum complexes, chemists have shifted towards non-platinum based anticancer drugs. Among them, organotin(IV) complexes play a vital role because of their physicochemical properties and ability to form stable complexes with a unique structure that are important in drug development as biologically active agents. Ligand scaffolds chosen for this review article are hydrazones and thio-semicarbazones. In analytical chemistry, hydrazones are prepared by the reaction of ketones or aldehydes with hydrazides and have ONO and NNO donor atoms. They can act as multidentate ligands with tin metal and show many physiological and biological properties. Hydrazones contain an azomethine -NHN=CH- group which forms significant class of compounds for new drug discovery. Thiosemicarbazones are obtained by the reaction of thiosemicarbazides with aldehydes or ketones and have NNS, NNO, ONO and ONS donor atoms. Thio-semicarbazone, a type of well-known ion-coordinative functional groups has been introduced into various chemotherapeutic motifs to realize its importance. Thiosemicarbazones have a wide clinical antitumour spec-trum with its efficacy in various tumour cells due to thione-thiol tautomerism. Therefore, this article presents recent progress since 2012 highlighting antitumour activities.

Automated summary

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Organotin(IV) complexes have shown potential in cancer treatment, while ligands such as thiosemicarbazones and hydrazones can form stable complexes with tin metal, exhibiting significant biological activities.