In vitro antioxidant capacity vs in vivo antimetastatic effect of anticancer cobalt complexes

Four different methods were used to measure the "in vitro" antioxidant capacity of three cobalt complexes recently proposed as anticancer active principles: a new biosensor method and a new pulse voltammetric, or pulse polarographic method, together with two other methods - one fluorimetric and the other spectrophotometric. Results obtained using the different methods are discussed and compared with the anti-metastatic effect recently measured "in vivo" by Russian authors. The good correlation found between anti-tumoral and anti-metastatic activity ranking and in vitro antioxidant activity found by the new voltammetric method suggests interesting hypotheses based on the anti-tumoral effect of these complexes. © 2008 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.