MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY OF BIOACTIV

Cancer represents one of the most severe health problems worldwide, and the development of new anticancer drugs and more effective treatment strategies are fields of utmost importance in drug discovery and clinical therapy. Much of the research in these areas is currently focused on cancer-specific mechanisms and the corresponding molecular targets (e.g., kinases related to cell cycle progression or signal transduction),1 but the search for improved cytotoxic agents (acting on ubiquitous targets such as DNA or tubulin) still constitutes an important part of modern anticancer drug discovery. As the major types of solid human tumors (breast, lung, prostate, and colon), which represent most cancer cases today, are multicausal in nature, there is a growing recognition that the treatment of solid tumors with ‘‘mechanism-based’’ agents alone is unlikely to be successful. Instead, improved treatment strategies are likely to involve combinations of signal transduction inhibitors with new and better cytotoxic drugs.