Combine gold atoms, thioglucosides and N-heterocyclic carbenes and you get a complex that targets ovarian cancer cells in vitro while leaving healthy tissue untouched, writes a Flemish-Italian team in the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry.

One of the problems with chemotherapy is that it not only kills cancer cells but also attacks healthy tissue and is therefore not specific. The development of cancer-specific drugs is therefore a high priority. In recent years, molecules containing gold, palladium, sugar molecules or N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have been tested as potential drug candidates. Researchers from Ghent University and the Università degli Studi di Padova combined all these components and found that their complexes worked well against ovarian cancer cell lines.