Over the last 5 decades, biologically active compounds derived from natural
resources have provided a number of useful cancer chemotherapeutic drugs. The search
for natural product based drug candidates is growing rapidly with the advancements in
drug discovery and development techniques in recent years, with the active fractions
and isolates of marine organisms along with terrestrial plants. Microorganisms are also
being explored for their anti-cancer activities. The present review highlights the
information about occurrence, types, clinical features pathophysiology and etiology of
cancer as well as conventional and recent advancements in anticancer drug
development along with description of selected medicinal plants and compounds
derived from natural sources or their derivatives with potential use as cancer
chemotherapeutic agents. It is expected that such promising leads from natural origin
tend to create extensive interest among researchers including medicinal chemists and
pharmacologists working in anticancer drug research and therefore the availability of a
given brief information about cancer and anticancer drug development focused on
natural product may be proved useful to develop preliminary ideas of biochemical
pathways and key enzymes regulating these pathways as well as new targets involved
in different stages of the disease along with chemotherapeutic agents which selectively
target a specific signaling pathway through structure-activity relationships and
preclinical trials.
Keywords: Anticancer, Chemotherapy, Drug development, Grafts, Medicinal
plants, Natural products.