Molecular approaches towards development of purified natural products and their structurally known derivatives as efficient anti-cancer drugs: current trends

Several natural products and their derivatives, either in purified or structurally identified form, exhibit immense pharmacological and biological properties, some of them showing considerable anticancer potential. Although the molecular mechanisms of action of some of these products are yet to be elucidated, extensive research in this area continues to generate new data that are clinically exploitable. Recent advancement in molecular biology, high throughput screening, biomarker identifications, target selection and genomic approaches have enabled us to understand salient interactions of natural products and their derivatives with cancer cells vis-à-vis normal cells. In this review we highlight the recent approaches and application of innovative technologies made to improve quality as well as efficiency of structurally identified natural products and their derivatives, particularly in small molecular forms capable of being used in “targeted therapies” in oncology. These products preferentially involve multiple mechanistic pathways and overcome chemo-resistance in tumor types with cumulative action. We also mention briefly a few physico-chemical features that compare natural products with drugs in recent natural product discovery approaches. We further report here a few purified natural products as examples that provide molecular interventions in cancer therapeutics to give the reader a glimpse of the current trends of approach for discovering useful anticancer drugs.