Recent advances in synthesis and anti-tumor effect of organism-modified polyoxometalates inorganic organic hybrids.

[Display omitted] • Cancer is the number one enemy of human health. • Purely inorganic Polyoxometalates (POMs)-based compounds are effective against cancers, but still bear many drawbacks. • Novel POMs-based Inorganic organic hybrids have been confirmed to be more effective comparing with purely inorganic compounds. • These researches open us a new and meaningful direction of cancer drug treatments. Inorganic polyoxometalates (POMs) have drawn extensive attentions in the fields of chemical catalysis, biological medicine, and energy-store material. Due to their remarkable performances on bioactivity especial in anti-tumor and anti-virus, POMs have been regarded as a novel and potential anti-tumor drug material. However, the purely inorganic POMs would bear obvious defects when they were applied in drug therapy, such as low solubility in organism and high-toxic on normal cell. Therefore, researchers in recent have paid great efforts to improve the solubility and anti-tumor activity of POMs by grafting organic functional groups onto inorganic parent frame. At present, as new and potential anti-tumor drug compounds, these inorganic organic hybrids generated by combining POMs and organic groups have become a hot spot and have been deeply studied around the world. Here in this review, we would like to summarize the important works that reported in the last five years, mainly about the synthetic routes, basic structures, and anti-tumor effects of POMs-organism hybrids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]