Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry (Formerly Current Medicinal Chemistry - Anti-Cancer Agents) - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2013

Actinidia chinensis Planch. is a famous Chinese herbal medicine to treat many diseases such as cancers. Triterpenes, polyphenols and anthraquinones are normally considered as the main constituents for its effects. In this study, eleven known triterpenes were isolated from the root of Actinidia chinensis., and were examined for its antiangiogenic activities. Their structures were elucidated by comprehensive spectrosc Read More

Metastasis of tumor cells from primary tumor and growth at secondary sites are the major cause of mortality in cancer patients. This event may occur years and even decades after successful removal of the primary tumor and adjuvant therapy. Relapse and metastasis are universally existed in various malignancies. This phenomenon is attributed to a small amount of residual tumor cells remained in host for years, which is cal Read More

In case-control profiling studies, increasing the sample size does not always improve statistical power because the variance may also be increased if samples are highly heterogeneous. For instance, tumor samples used for gene expression assay are often heterogeneous in terms of tissue composition or mechanism of progression, or both; however, such variation is rarely taken into account in expression profiles analysis. Read More

Recently, the advancement of nanotechnology has had a significant impact on clinical therapeutics. Advances in biocompatible drug carriers using organic/inorganic nanoparticles have enabled safer and more efficient delivery of anti-cancer agents. In particular, nanoparticles designed and fabricated by sophisticated processes can (as drug carriers) deliver precise doses of multiple anti-cancer agents to target cancer cells, i Read More

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is provided to patients with locally advanced breast cancer. Its main objective is to bring about a complete pathologic response which is correlated with long term patient survival, a clinical end point of preoperative chemotherapy. Besides, it may downsize the tumor, enabling breast conserving or limited mastectomy. Preoperative chemotherapy also provides the opportunity of assessing the chemose Read More

Background and Aim: To determine the correlation of histopathological classification and patient outcomes, we performed a meta-analysis of histological subtypes on postoperative survival in gastric cancer. Methods: A dataset composed of 11073 gastric cancers from 21 publications, combined with our cohort was included in the metaanalysis. We evaluated the association between the 5-year survival rate and the subt Read More

Background: Neutropenia and diarrhea are the common dose-limiting toxicities of irinotecan, and uridine diphosphate glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) gene polymorphisms are considered to be one of the predictive markers of irinotecan related toxicities. This study aims to investigate the association between UGT1A1 gene polymorphisms and irinotecan related toxicities in Chinese Han gastrointestinal cancer patients recei Read More

Epigenetic alterations have been implicated in the development and progression of human cancer. It is noteworthy that epigenetic modifications, in contrast to genetic mutations, are intrinsically reversible. This triggers an impressive interest of researchers in treatment of cancer patients via targeting epigenetic mechanisms, leading to subsequent intensive investigations of epigenetic drugs as a novel therapeutic intervention. Read More

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare but typically aggressive malignancy. Radical surgery remains the potentially curative option. However, about one third of patients initially present with distant metastases. Regarding to chemotherapy, mitotane alone or in combination with cytotoxic drugs should be the first selection. Meanwhile, a phase lll clinical trial of etoposide, doxorubicin, cisplatin plus mitotane or streptozotocin Read More

Depression is the most common psychiatric syndrome in cancer patients and adversely affects anti-cancer immune system and life quality of patients. Antidepressant desipramine (DMI) is clinically prescribed in the auxiliary treatment of cancer patients. Increasing evidences suggest that DMI has a broad spectrum of target-off biological effects, such as anticancer properties. Our previous study revealed that DMI at the clin Read More

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an almost lethal disease. Thus, it is important to better understand its genetic progression from normal cells through precancerous lesions pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) to invasive pancreatic cancer. Carriers of a germline mutation in BRCA2 have an increased risk of developing PDAC when compared with the general population. The purpose of our study w Read More

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and promoter hypermethylation are vital epigenetic mechanisms for transcriptional inactivation of tumor suppressor. IRX1 is a newly identified tumor suppressor gene and hypermethylation involves the decreased expression in gastric cancer. However, the microRNA regulatory mechanism on IRX1 expression is still unclear. In this study, we report an IRX1-targeting miRNA-544, which directly targets 3'- Read More

Mesothelin, a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchored cell surface protein, is a potential target for antibody-based cancer therapy due to its high expression in mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma and other cancers. The SS1P immunotoxin and MORAb-009 (amatuximab), a chimeric monoclonal antibody, are currently being evaluated in clinical trials. In this review, we discuss the role of mes Read More

The investigation of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of cancer since the early 1940s has resulted in the discovery of over 50 drugs till date. However, most of these drugs result in severe side effects causing physical and mental trauma to patients. In order to eliminate the side effects, search for better and safer drugs has been ongoing for several decades, which has resulted in the discovery of anti-cancer prop Read More

The discovery of cis-platin and its second and third generation analogues created a hope in cancer chemotherapy. Cis-platin and its second generation analogue carboplatin have been used for the treatment of some cancers from a long time. The third generation analogues have superior anti-cancer profiles for curing a few cancers. Unfortunately, certain side effects such as renal impairment, neurotoxicity and ot Read More

The potential of flavonoids to act as anti-tumor agents has been recognized but not fully understood because flavonoids are acting at several stages in cancer progression with distinct structure-function relationships. A whole family of structurally different flavonoids is herein described by reviewing some critical aspects of their pro-oxidant behavior in vitro/vivo and in cell systems by which they may work as antioxidants. Di Read More

Metformin is a biguanide derivative which is widely prescribed as an oral drug for diabetes mellitus type 2. This old molecule has recently received a new attention because of its therapeutic properties in oncology, that seem to be independent of its action on glycemia homeostasis. The reappraisal of its pharmacological effects was supported by delineation of signaling pathways and more recently clinical trials. Numerou Read More

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a challenging neoplasm that despite therapeutic advances requires efforts to overcome the multidrug resistance (MDR) phenotype, the major cause of relapse. The pterocarpanquinone LQB-118 is a new compound that induces apoptosis in leukemia cells. The objective of this work was to analyze the role of LQB-118 in inhibiting the inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs), XIAP and survivin, as well Read More

Multidrug resistance has became the major obstacle to cancer chemotherapy. Recent studies suggest that quercetin could enhance the response of tumors to chemotherapy although the mechanism by which quercetin enhances the sensitivity of tumor cells to chemical drugs remains elusive. Therefore, in this study, we examined the effects of quercetin on doxorubicin cytotoxicity in human breast cancer cells and investigated Read More