Pieter M. Pil

Cisplatin and Related Drugs

Platinum complexes are used to treat approximately half of all patients receiving cancer chemotherapy. Cisplatin was the first platinum compound discovered to have anticancer activity. Following its introduction into the clinical management of cancer, two other platinum drugs received widespread regulatory approval, carboplatin and oxaliplatin. All three compounds exert their cytotoxic effects by coordinating to DNA where they inhibit both replication and transcription and trigger a cell death pathway. This entry in the Encyclopedia focuses mainly on cisplatin, the prototypical platinum anticancer drug, and its properties highlight the general features of platinum drugs as a class.