Original Articles
Mamdouh S. Masouda, Ala E. Ali
Abstract
Metal complexes of antibiotics have powerful antimicrobial activities and are used in medicinal field such as silver bandages for treatment of burns, zinc antiseptic creams, bismuth drugs for the treatment of ulcers and also as anti- HIV drugs. The chelating properties of metals were used to prepare metal complexes of all the classes of antibiotics as metalloantibiotics. Although most antibiotics do not need metal ions for their biological activities but, there are some of antibiotics that require metal ions for maintaining proper structure and/or function of these antibiotics, such as bleomycin, streptonigrin and bacitracin. Metalloantibiotics can interact with several different kinds of biomolecules, including DNA, RNA, proteins, receptors, and lipids, rendering their unique and specific bioactivities. In addition to antimicrobial activity of metalloantibiotics, also show antiviral and antineoplastic activities which provide a various function of the term metalloantibiotics. Bismuth-fluoroquinolone complexes have developed as drugs against H. pylori related ailments. Antibiotics metal complexes and the mixed antibiotics metal complexes were found more effective as chemotherapy agents than their parent antibiotics.