ABSTRACT
This chapter looks for certain sources among organocobalt complexes, i.e., in the range of cobalt compounds containing a metal-carbon σ-bond. This choice was made because of their susceptibility to homolytic cleavage and the dependence of the reaction rate on the coordination environment of the metal. For the authors' purposes, it is essential that raising the acidity of the medium allows, in principle, a change of the coordination environment of the metal in the needed direction, e.g., to substitute a nitrogen base ligand by a water molecule, or even to cause protonation of a donor atom. However, with the known types of organocobalt complexes, the effect of such substitutions is not great enough and protonation occurs only under strong acidification, i.e., beyond the physiological pH range. It is widely known that the main feature of malignant neoplastic cells distinguishing them from normal ones is their capability for uncontrollable proliferation.
