Starting soon after the production of fullerenes in 1990, many efforts
have been devoted to the application of C60 and its derivatives.
In fact, 60fullerene possesses a variety of interesting biological
properties, such as HIV-P inhibition, DNA photocleavage,
neuroprotection, apoptosis, etc. Unfortunately, the low solubility in
biological fluids limits the use of these compounds as new pharmacophores
for structure-activity relationship studies in medicinal
chemistry. This article briefly summarizes recent studies on the
functionalization of C60 aimed at increasing water solubility as
well as the preliminary studies performed on biological targets. In
particular, the HIV-P inhibition, DNA photocleavage and antibacterial
activity are discussed.
