Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry (Formerly Current Medicinal Chemistry - Anti-Cancer Agents) - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2014

Poxvirus-based vaccines have a long record of efficacy as both anti-tumour agents and vectors for gene therapy in different human tumour models. Interestingly, several studies of these vaccines have now entered the clinical evaluation phase for safety and effectiveness. A desirable outcome of antigen specific cancer immunotherapy is the disruption of host self-tolerance against endogenous tumour-associated antig Read More

The prognosis of patients with metastatic cervical cancer is poor with a median survival of 8-13 months. Despite the potency of chemotherapeutic drugs, this treatment is rarely curative and should be considered palliative only. The last decades, targeted therapies such as immunotherapy have emerged as an attractive option for the treatment of these patients. Immunotherapy can consist of different modalities such as monocl Read More

Effective elicitation of endogenous immunity is associated with improved prognosis for cancer patients. Clinical evidence in hematological and solid cancers shows that intratumoral injection of immunostimulatory genes primes and augments endogenous T cell responses. The ability of pro-inflammatory chemokines/cytokines to facilitate migration/activation of antigen-presenting cells (APC) and lymphocytes prompted our m Read More

Adoptive immunotherapy is considered a promising strategy for the treatment of metastatic tumors and current research efforts are directed to define the optimal approach and facilitate the transferability from preclinical to clinical settings. Among several approaches it is possible to schematically distinguish strategies based on either MHC-restricted or MHC-unrestricted immune effectors. The first are mainly based o Read More

Tumor cells, including leukemic cells, remodel their bioenergetic system in favor of aerobic glycolysis. This process is called “the Warburg effect” and offers an attractive pharmacological target to preferentially eliminate malignant cells. In addition, recent results show that metabolic changes can be linked to tumor immune evasion. Mouse models demonstrate the importance of this metabolic remodeling in leukemogenesis. S Read More

Garlic (Allium sativum) has been used for centuries as a prophylactic and therapeutic medicinal agent. Importantly, garlic has been suggested to have both cancer-preventive potential as well as significant enhancing effects on the immune system. While these observations are supported experimentally both in vitro and in vivo, the impact of garlic in assisting the immune system in the prevention of cancer still lacks experi Read More

Cancer cells create a microenvironment that prevents tumor rejection by the host’s immune system. The activation of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) can elicit an innate immune response and guide the adaptive immune response to overcome this. dsRNA analogs can trigger TLR3, RIG-I, MDA5, NLRP3 and several other PRRs to induce not only robust immune response against cancer but also programmed cell Read More

Traditional anti-cancer therapies (surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy) have limited effectiveness in curbing progression of advanced tumors. However, with advances in immunology and molecular biology in the last two decades, the prognosis of cancer immunotherapy has improved. An emerging therapy is the cancer vaccine as adjunctive therapy. The purpose of this paper is to review this therapeutic modality for non-s Read More

Cervical cancer is the second most common malignancy among women worldwide. The prime causal factor of the disease is a persistent infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) with individuals failing to mount a sufficient immune response against the virus. Despite the current success of HPV16- and 18-specific prophylactic vaccination, established HPV infections and associated neoplasia require therapeutic vaccines with t Read More

Re-programming of metabolic pathways is a hallmark of pathological changes in cancer cells. The expression of certain genes that directly control the rate of key metabolic pathways including glycolysis, lipogenesis and nucleotide synthesis is dysregulated for the adaptation and progression of tumor cells to become more aggressive phenotypes. The pentose phosphate pathway controlled by glucose- 6-phosphate dehydrogenas Read More

Recent data have shown strong chemopreventive and possibly cancer chemotherapeutic effects of green tea polyphenols against cancer. Despite advances in breast cancer treatment, mortality from breast cancer is still high. Undoubtedly novel treatment strategies are needed for chemoprevention of high risk women and for the treatment of receptor negative breast cancer. Green tea catechins have been shown t Read More

The term “angiogenic switch” describes one of the earlier events of tumorigenesis, that occurs when the balance between proand anti-angiogenic factors shifts towards a pro-angiogenic outcome. This leads to the transition from a microscopic indolent lesion to a macroscopic and vascularised primary tumor, that may eventually metastasize and spread to distant sites. The molecular mechanisms underlying such a critical step i Read More

As chemotherapy with temozolomide is far from providing satisfactory clinical outcomes for patients with glioblastoma, more efficient drugs and drug combinations are urgently needed. The anti-malarial artesunate was previously shown to exert a profound cytotoxic effect on various tumor cell lines including those derived from glioblastoma. In the current study, we sought to examine the antiproliferative effect of a combina Read More

A new series of N-substituted diarylidenepiperidin-4-ones was synthesized and screened for their possible anticancer activity at the NCI Developmental Therapeutic Program. Almost all the synthesized compounds showed more potent antiproliferative activity than curcumin. The most active compound in this study was 3,5-bis(4-bromobenzylidene)-1-propanoylpiperidin-4-one (8a) with MGMID GI50, TGI, and LC50 values Read More

Ellipticine (5,11-dimethyl-6H-pyrido[4,3-b]carbazole) is an alkaloid that has been isolated from plants of an Apocynaceae family. It is one of the simplest naturally occurring alkaloids with a planar structure. Over the past decades, ellipticine became a very promising antitumor agent. Interaction with DNA is one of the most studied ellipticine effects on cell division. This phenomenon is not clearly explained so far. In our Read More