A great threat to human life due to fatal impact of cancer stirred up the researchers to be immersed in deep research on metallopharmaceuticals which made immediate available of platinum based drugs, cisplatin and its congeners as anticancer candidates but owing to associate with a bunch of side effects, they are now being exiled from the routine use in chemotherapy which led the researchers to think of discovering some non-platinum based selective anticancer metallo drugs in near future. In this situation, the blissful appearance of Ruthenium(II) and iridium(III) based metallochemotherapeutics with minimal side effects having enriched cytoselectivity and target specificity has unlocked the door of fruitful anticancer research. In line with this, we have desired to deal with several newly developed Ru(II) arene complexes, cyclometalated Ru(II) complexes, Ir(III)-cp* complexes and cyclometalatedIr(III) complexes in this article where in most of the cases it is evident that molecules are selectively targeting the cancer cells rather than the normal. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.