الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Cancer is one of the leading diseases that cause millions of deaths worldwide. The overall survival rate of patients remains low, despite significant improvements in life expectancy achieved by innovations in cancer therapy and diagnosis. Therefore, the search for new, effective, and low-toxic anticancer agents is one of the most important tasks of modern medicinal chemistry. In general, the solution of this problem comes down to finding new compounds that would act on molecular targets that play an important role in carcinogenesis. Numerous studies in this field have shown that topoisomerases I and II are molecular targets in the development of modern anticancer agents for an increasing number of anticancer drugs. A large number of organic compounds belonging to different classes are known to be capable of inhibiting topoisomerases, including those isolated from the natural sources; for example, camptothecin (CPT), podophyllotoxin, anthracyclines, polyene acids, and many others. However, along with their efficacy, some of these compounds have several substantial disadvantages. High toxicity towards the healthy cells, low bioavailability, and cancer cells resistance are the main drawbacks. The ways to overcome these shortcomings include the preparation of anticancer drugs with high potency and selectivity with improved pharmacological properties. Therefore, numerous researchers have been carrying out an intensive effort to develop anticancer agents either natural or synthetic that target the topoisomerase enzymes with aim to control and treat the disease via altering the catalytic activity of Topo I or Topo II |