Polyamines--Physiological effect

One of the most common chemotherapeutic drugs in use today is cis-DDP. While this substance has been found useful in the treatment of various malignant neoplasias, it also has many adverse side effects. Recently, polymeric cis-DDP analogs have been prepared using potassium tetrachloroplatinate and various diamines. Testing of these polymeric analogs has shown that some are biologically active while others are biologically inactive. The goal of this research was to investigate the possible reasons for the differences in biological activity which had been observed. The biological activity of the diamine components, the molecular weight of the polymers, and the degradation of the polymers were examined to determine if any of these properties of the polymers could be correlated to their biological activities.