Over the last few years, significant attention has been paid to develop metal complexes for different cellular organelle specific imaging agents and to achieve organelle targeting anticancer drugs. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the largest organelle in human cells is largely responsible for the synthesis of protein, lipid and hormones. ER is also crucial for protein folding and detoxification of cells. Cellular stress within the ER generates an ER stress leading to cell death. Several naturally occurring anticancer agents have been reported to induce ER stress response as a main mechanism of cell death. In spite of these facts, ER targeting synthetic small molecules are rare in the literature and research on the development of ER targeting metal complexes is only a few years old. In this review, we have discussed about the recent development in the ER targeting metal complexes which are used as ER imaging and ER targeting anticancer agents with detailed mechanism of action. Moreover, we also discussed about the difficulties and their possible solution in order to translate these kinds of molecules to clinic.

在过去的几年中，已经为开发用于不同细胞器特异性成像剂的金属配合物并实现靶向细胞器的抗癌药物投入了大量精力。内质网（ER）是人类细胞中最大的细胞器，主要负责蛋白质，脂质和激素的合成。ER对于蛋白质折叠和细胞解毒也至关重要。内质网中的细胞应激产生内质网应激，导致细胞死亡。据报道，几种天然存在的抗癌剂可诱导ER应激反应，并将其作为细胞死亡的主要机制。尽管有这些事实，但是靶向ER的合成小分子在文献中很少，并且针对ER靶向金属络合物的开发的研究还只有几年的历史。在这篇评论中 我们讨论了靶向ER的金属络合物的最新进展，这些化合物被用作ER成像和具有靶向作用的ER靶向抗癌剂。此外，我们还讨论了将这些分子转化为临床所需的困难及其可能的解决方案。