Final Report Summary - BIOINCMED (Bioinorganic Chemistry for the Design of New Medicines)
New medicines with new mechanisms of action are urgently required, especially for the treatment of life-threatening resistance in cancer and bacterial infections. Most current medicines are based on organic chemistry, but metal compounds can offer new mechanisms to fight resistance. In this project the major challenges of designing new metal-based cancer drugs and applying state-of-the-art methods to study their chemistry, biochemistry and molecular pharmacology were tackled. As a result we have discovered novel precious metal compounds (organo-metallic compounds) that are candidates for development as anticancer drugs with new mechanisms of action which have the potential to overcome resistance to current drugs with less side-effects. Importantly we have contributed to the advanced training of young post-doctoral researchers and graduate research students in a highly interdisciplinary international research environment. Our work has inspired other research teams world-wide to explore this new field of medicinal inorganic chemistry. This would not have been possible without ERC support.