**Preface to "Anticancer Drugs 2021"**

The research presented in this Special Issue, "Anticancer Drugs 2021", of *Pharmaceuticals* provides a broad selection of results that were achieved in the field of anticancer drug development in 2021. The collection contains contributions which are focused on cancer drug discovery and newly approved anticancer drugs together with important reviews in specific areas of cancer therapeutics. The development of new anticancer drugs for clinical use is extremely challenging, because of the emergence of resistance to many chemotherapeutic agents. The investigations reported in this Special Issue on anticancer drugs cover a wide area of research and include the design and synthesis of new molecular entities, molecular modelling, computational techniques and the development of molecular and biochemical tests. The discovery of compounds targeting kinases, tubulin, thymidylate synthase, histone deacetylase, HER2 and apoptosis-related proteins, together with studies on cancer drug toxicity and resistance mechanisms, are included. Both the current direction and future potential for research in these areas are outlined.

This Special Issue highlights both the opportunities and challenges which are identified in the discovery of novel small-molecule cancer drugs, and also demonstrates the applications of innovative cancer therapies. Contemporary drug design offers exciting opportunities for the discovery of new anticancer therapeutics and provides a direction for future research in this area. Recent trends in the design, synthesis, therapeutic applications and regulatory approvals of anticancer drugs are presented in this collection which demonstrate the relevance of medicinal chemistry in cancer research.

> **Mary J. Meegan and Niamh M O'Boyle** *Editors*
