Natural products, bioisosterism and self-assembling toward the synthesis of new anticancer compounds

The research in the field of new anticancer compounds is focused on overcoming resistance and improving the performance (such as bioavailability and delivery) of known active compounds. For what regards resistance Cancer Stem Cells are crucial and they are worthy to be considered for the development of effective treatments in particular for some specific type of cancers.1 In this light the design and synthesis of compounds that are able to interfere with Hedgehog pathway will be discussed within the presentation.2 In the recent year we focused our attention toward the possibility to exploit self-assembling to in water and to generate nanostructures that could improve the internalization in the cells.3 Essentially, the discussion will focus on compounds such as GDC-0449 (vismodegib), cyclopamine, paclitaxel, podophyllotoxin, camptothecin and epothilone A.