Recent advances in endoplasmic reticulum targeting metal complexes

Over the last few years, significant attention has been paid to develop metal complexes for different cellular organelle specific imaging agents and to achieve organelle targeting anticancer drugs. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the largest organelle in human cells is largely responsible for the synthesis of protein, lipid and hormones. ER is also crucial for protein folding and detoxification of cells. Cellular stress within the ER generates an ER stress leading to cell death. Several naturally occurring anticancer agents have been reported to induce ER stress response as a main mechanism of cell death. In spite of these facts, ER targeting synthetic small molecules are rare in the literature and research on the development of ER targeting metal complexes is only a few years old. In this review, we have discussed about the recent development in the ER targeting metal complexes which are used as ER imaging and ER targeting anticancer agents with detailed mechanism of action. Moreover, we also discussed about the difficulties and their possible solution in order to translate these kinds of molecules to clinic. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.