Natural Products and Cancer Drug Discovery (Cancer Drug Discovery and Development)

This volume will cover the natural products as they relate to cancer chemotherapy. The topics will include history and current status , recent launches, new clinical candidates and approved drugs directly derived from natural products, current and future cancer target opportunities for natural products, leveraging natural products as tools for new target generation , new approaches to cancer drug discovery through natural products based lead generation, and enabling technologies which leverage the unique attributes of natural products. Natural products- compounds derived from plants, microbes and marine organisms, have been an unsurpassed source of cancer drugs in the modern era of drug discovery. The historical record is strong, but what is the current impact of natural products in the discovery and development of cancer drugs, and importantly what are the prospects for natural products to be a valuable source of future agents? This volume attempts to address this question through a series of chapters authored by leading researchers in the field which effectively provide an in-depth view of several high impact areas of natural products cancer research. The volume begins with a focused analysis and rationale for the clinical success of current natural product anti-cancer drugs. The following chapters then describe new natural product based drugs in three rapidly evolving target classes and modalities- agents which target tumor vasculature, inhibitors of histone deacetylase and other histone modifying enzymes, and antibody drug conjugates. Subsequent chapters examine the central role of natural product chemical scaffolds in the genesis of new anti-cancer therapeutics- first via the powerful application of chemical synthesis, and then through the rapidly emerging fields of biosynthetic engineering and plant cell culture. The volume concludes with an assessment of the critical role that natural products continue to play in the search for new cancer drug targets. As the reader makes his or her way through the volume it may become clear that there is strong evidence that natural products will continue to exert a profound positive impact on cancer drug discovery Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Impact of Natural Products Upon Cancer Chemotherapy....Pages 3-15 Identification and Development of Vascular Disrupting Agents: Natural Products That Interfere with Tumor Growth....Pages 17-38 Discodermolide: Past, Present, and Future....Pages 39-58 HDAC Inhibitors and Other Histone Modifying Natural Products as Emerging Anticancer Agents....Pages 59-95 Natural Product Cytotoxins as Payloads for Antibody Drug Conjugates....Pages 97-119 Front Matter....Pages 121-121 Natural Product Scaffolds in Cancer Therapy....Pages 123-173 The Role of Genetic Engineering in Natural Product-Based Anticancer Drug Discovery....Pages 175-191 Accessing Anti-cancer Natural Products by Plant Cell Culture....Pages 193-211 Natural Products as Tools for Discovering New Cancer Targets....Pages 213-237 Back Matter....Pages 239-244 With reliable commentary and analysis in a sector often associated with outlandish claims, this volume provides a valuable overview of how natural products could generate new cancer therapeutics as well as mitigating the deleterious effects of chemotherapy.