Cancer (Topics in Medicinal Chemistry)

The science of medicinal chemistry offers mankind one of its best hopes for improving the quality of life. The art of medicinal chemistry continues to challenge its practitioners with the need for both intuition and experience to discover new drugs. Hence sharing the experience of drug discovery is uniquely beneficial to the field of medicinal chemistry.

The series Topics in Medicinal Chemistry is designed to help both novice and experienced medicinal chemists share insights from the drug discovery process. For the novice, the introductory chapter to each volume provides background and valuable perspective on a field of medicinal chemistry not available elsewhere. Succeeding chapters then provide examples of successful drug discovery efforts that describe the most up-to-date work from this field.

The last decade has seen a dramatic shift in anticancer drug research towards agents that aim to target selectively key regulatory and signaling processes known to drive tumorigenesis. A number of these newer agents have now been introduced into clinical practice. This volume reviews advances in cancer chemotherapy research over the last 10 years and will be of interest to scientists engaged in drug research in the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology and startup companies, academia and government institutions. Chapters written by leading experts in their field reflect a range of current medicinal chemistry approaches to small molecule drugs, including anti-hormonal therapy, growth factor inhibition, survival signaling, cell cycle inhibition, anti-angiogenics and anti-nvasives. Each chapter aims to cover the drug target and biological rationale, chemotypes, clinical status and future prospects in this rapidly developing area of drug research.