Lanthanide complexes for drug delivery and therapeutics

Lanthanide complex-based medicine combining organic ligands and individual lanthanide ions is proving successful in therapeutics, especially in drug delivery, chemotherapy, and photodynamic therapy. In this review, I discuss the coordination chemistry, antenna effect, and chelating ligands of lanthanide complexes and their key features benefiting the therapeutical monitoring and performance, such as fingerprint emissions, large pseudo-Stokes’ shifts, long lifetimes, two-photon excitations and magnetic resonance responses. While illustrating their pharmaceutical applications in drug delivery, chemotherapy and photodynamic therapy, I identify the challenges and prospective opportunities in clinical translation of the lanthanide complex-based medicine.