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. •Coordination chemistry, antenna effect and chelators of lanthanide complexes.•Key features of lanthanide complexes benefiting therapeutical applications.•Their emerging advances in drug delivery, chemotherapy and photodynamic therapy.•Challenges and opportunities in material engineering and clinical translation.