Applications of samarium complexes as cytotoxic, bioimaging and DNA interacting agents: a comprehensive review

Cisplatin coined a term Metallodrug and later a tradition of Metallodrugs was established. Later, severe renal and metabolic toxicities of the platinum based drugs prompted the medicinal chemists to develop new and novel metallotherapeutics with different metal cores. Henceforth, chemists designed the metal complexes based on copper, cobalt, vanadium iron and zinc. These complexes were reported for their antibacterial, anticancer, antidiabetic and enzyme inhibitors. Later, chemists also focused on lanthanide metal ions and resulted in the design of metal complexes for the application of bio imaging cellular studies as well as chemotherapeutic agents. This review throws a light on the recent advances in the development of the samarium complexes as efficient and versatile biological agents. Samarium complexes based on various ligand systems and ancillary ligands have been mentioned in this review stating their biological efficacy and potency against variable cancer cell lines, their DNA interactive behaviour.