• A chemical compound that binds tightly to metal ions. In medicine, chelating agents are used to remove toxic metals from the body. They are also being studied in the treatment of cancer.
  NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms
  U.S. National Cancer Institute, 2021
• An inorganic or organic molecule which binds metal ions. Metal chelators are frequently polydentate, indicating that they form multiple bonds with the metal ion, resulting in more stable coordination complexes.
  NCI
  U.S. National Cancer Institute, 2021
• Organic chemicals that form coordination bonds with a central metal ion, used to chemically remove ions from solutions, medicinally against microorganisms, to treat metal poisoning and in chemotherapy protocols.
  CRISP Thesaurus
  National Institutes of Health, 2006
• Used to sequester ions from solution and to form stable complexes (e.g. sequestering agent). (Pharmaceutical Excipients: A review Shilpa P Chaudhari and Pradeep S Patil Marathwada Mitra Mandal's College of Pharmacy, Thergaon, Pune, Maharashtra, India. USP <1059>)
  U.S. FDA Glossary
  U.S. Food & Drug Administration, 2021
• Chemicals that bind to and remove ions from solutions. Many chelating agents function through the formation of COORDINATION COMPLEXES with METALS.
  NLM Medical Subject Headings
  U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2025