Cancer chemotherapy is a rather young discipline. It has been pursued with scientific vigor and multinational collaborations only since the mid-20th century. Although 92 approved anticancer drugs are available today for the treatment of more than 200 different tumor entities, effective therapies for most of these tumors are lacking (1). Out of the 92 registered drugs, 17 are considered by oncol...

Cancer is a leading cause of death all over the world and represents a major public health burden. Natural plant products have been historically used for the treatment of various diseases. The earnest search for plant-derived anticancer agents began in the 1950s with the discovery and development of the vinca alkaloids–vinblastine and vincristine, and with the isolation of the cytotoxic podophy...

Various active anticancer agents are derived from plants and terrestrial microorganisms. Isolation of C-nucleosides from the Caribbean sponge, Cryptotheca crypta, four decades ago, provided the basis for the synthesis of cytarabine, the first marine derived anticancer agent to be developed for clinical use. Cytarabine is currently used in the routine treatment of patients with leukaemia and lym...

Sweet's syndrome (acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis) is an infrequent skin disease characterized by sudden onset of fever, leucocytosis and erythematous plaques or nodules infiltrated by neutrophils. There are three main clinical settings in which Sweet's syndrome has been described: classical or idiopathic Sweet's syndrome, malignancy-associated Sweet's syndrome and drug-induced Sweet's sy...

A study of the degree of reproducibility of the Carcinoma 755 system when employed to obtain therapeutic indices of purine antagonists has been carried out. Some 60 "active" purine analogs have been studied by this system, used in a quantitative manner, and the approximate LD10's, minimum effective doses, therapeutic indices (LD10/T/C 0.10), and maximum degrees of effectiveness (T/C at the LD10...

Mutations of the PI3K, TOR, iNOS, and NF-κB genes increase lifespan of model organisms and reduce the risk of some aging-associated diseases. We studied the effects of inhibitors of PI3K (wortmannin), TOR (rapamycin), iNOS (1400W), NF-κB (pyrrolidin dithiocarbamate and QNZ), and the combined effects of inhibitors: PI3K (wortmannin) and TOR (rapamycin), NF-κB (pyrrolidin dithiocarbamates) and PI...

Iridium is a relatively rare precious heavy metal, only slightly less dense than osmium. Researchers have long recognized the catalytic properties of square-planar Ir(I) complexes, such as Crabtree's hydrogenation catalyst, an organometallic complex with cyclooctadiene, phosphane, and pyridine ligands. More recently, chemists have developed half-sandwich pseudo-octahedral pentamethylcyclopentad...

Platinum compounds represent one of the great success stories of metals in medicine. Following the serendipitous discovery of the anticancer activity of cisplatin by Rosenberg, a large number of cisplatin variants have been prepared and tested for their ability to kill cancer cells and inhibit tumor growth. These efforts continue today with increased realization that new strategies are needed t...

Anticancer agents act, at least in part, by inducing reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS). We examined the redox effect on SW480 and HT-29 colon cancer cells of four anticancer compounds, arsenic trioxide, phosphoaspirin, phosphosulindac, and nitric oxide-donating aspirin (NO-ASA). All compounds inhibited the growth of both cell lines (IC(50), 10-90 micromol/L) and induced RONS detected ...

Synthetic approaches to macrosphelide derivatives, based on medicinal chemistry, are summarized. This review contains conventional medicinal chemistry approaches, combinatorial chemistry, fluorous tagging techniques and affinity chromatography preparation. In addition, advances in their apoptosis-inducing activities are also included.