PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Chem. Biol.
Sec. Bioinorganic Chemistry
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fchbi.2025.1639340
This article is part of the Research TopicLinking Chemistry to Biology and Medicine via Metal ions: Developed from the 16th International Symposium on Applied Bioinorganic ChemistryView all 4 articles
Lessons from Metals-Containing Drugs in Diagnostic, and Theranostic Applications for Future Development of Metal-containing Non-conventional Therapeutics: Vanadium Compounds for Intratumor Administration
Provisionally accepted
- Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States
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The development of novel diagnostic, theranostic, and therapeutic agents drastically improved human health, human lifespan, and quality of life. In 2024, 15 of the 50 (30%) new drugs approved by the FDA were developed for the treatment of cancer. Despite encouraging examples of platinum-based anticancer drugs and many metal-based diagnostic agents for cancer, only a few metal-based drugs have translated to clinical success. Therapeutic drugs share many properties with diagnostic and theranostic agents, such as distribution and uptake, but differ in one key aspect: stability. Stability is key to the action of the potential drug and impact excretion and metabolism, and these properties illustrate the differences between diagnostic and therapeutic agents. That is, diagnostics are inherently stable and not metabolized whereas therapeutics are commonly administered as pro-drugs where metabolism is a common and often important aspect of their mode of action. In this perspective, we point to a novel administration strategy, such as intra-tumoral injections, for which highly reactive compounds, such as metalbased compounds would be desirable as long as the decomposition products are non-toxic. Investigations into a class of vanadium compounds for administration in difficult-to-treat cancers, such as glioblastomas, are briefly described here.
Keywords: Therapeutics, diagnostics, Theranostic agents, Metal coordination complexes, stability, Toxicity, MRI contrast agents, Radiopharmaceuticals
Received: 01 Jun 2025; Accepted: 12 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Crans and Miller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Debbie C. Crans, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States
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