Chemists create iridium compounds for the synthesis of 'smart' antitumor drugs

Chemists from St. Petersburg University has developed a new family of luminescent iridium complexes that, for the first time, realize a unique mechanism of photoactivated proton transfer. In the future, this discovery will potentially allow for the creation of a fundamentally new class of "smart" antitumor drugs that can be activated directly inside tumor cells and tracked in real time by the change in the color of their glow.