Natural Products in Cancer Treatments

Dear Colleagues,

Natural products are a major source of medicants in numerous diseases, and of particular interest in this Special Issue are those with anti-cancer activities. Natural products have an exemplary record as chemotherapeutic agents; such products include drugs such as camptothecin and taxol, both discovered over 70 years ago and remaining stalwart cancer treatments. Interest in natural products diminished in the 1990s in favor of synthetic compound libraries due to the inherent difficulty of discovering, developing, and transferring natural products into the clinic. However, natural products have evolved to become bioactive and as such provide a wide variety of mechanisms through which they may act as anti-cancer agents; said mechanisms have proven difficult to reproduce using synthetic compound libraries. Rough estimates indicate that around a quarter of newly approved chemotherapies are still derived from natural products. Notably, alongside technological advances in all areas of drug development, there is renewed interest in using natural products as agents for targeted cancer therapies.

Dr. Deborah A. Lannigan
Guest Editor

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• natural products
• bioactive
• chemotherapy
• anti-cancer
• targeted therapy