On the two types of antitumor compounds prohibiting strand separation under the double helix damage

It is shown that, besides antitumor drugs that form interstrand crosslink, DNA strand separation can be prohibited by compounds that induce a strong local stabilization of the double helix. Ruthenium and platinum complexes, examples of such compounds, are revealed in this work. A method of determination of concrete binding mechanism is proposed. The method is based upon comparison of results of computer modeling with experimental data on melting of DNA complexes with compounds under consideration.