Conclusion
You are now at the end of this free course, Metals in medicine. You should now be able to answer the following questions posed in the introduction – a note box is provided below for you to complete. You may find the questions in the exercise below useful in building your answers.
- How can the measurement of signals from living tissue be converted into images useful for diagnostic medicine?
- What is an MRI contrast agent and how can the properties of metal complexes be applied to this role?
- What aspects of the coordination chemistry of cisplatin underpin its effectiveness as an anticancer treatment, and what are the shortcomings of this drug which have necessitated the search for alternatives?
Activity 3
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(b)
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In this course you have seen the key role that metals play in medicine, both in medical imaging and in therapeutic applications. Research continues in both these areas with new metal containing compounds being synthesised, with optimised properties, leading to new generations of imaging agents and metallodrugs.
This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course S315 Chemistry: further concepts and applications [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .
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