The evidence of cancer in humans, animals and plant species suggests that it is as old as multicellular life on Earth. Why is it so difficult to understand and fight? Because cancer begins from the organism's own mutated single cell focused on its own survival. It would be naive to expect that cancer could be ever entirely eliminated, but there is still hope for finding effective treatments. The book is to give a view of selected aspects of cancer like its spread in nature, novel anticancer drugs based on Chinese herbs or birch bark, novel promising targets of annexins and kinases and progress in immunotherapy. It is our hope that you will find in this book interesting, inspiring and stimulating information concerning cancer research.

This book explains how current medicines against cancer work and how we find new ones. It provides an easy-to-understand overview of current options to treat patients with cancer, which includes Surgery, Radiation therapy, Chemotherapy, Targeted therapy and Immunotherapy. The efficiency of all these treatments is limited by the capacity of cancer cells to escape therapy. This book explains the mechanisms of anti-cancer drug resistance and strategies to overcome it. The discovery and development process of a new drug is detailed beginning with the identification and validation of a therapeutic target, the identification of an inhibitor of the target and its subsequent preclinical and clinical development until its approval by regulatory authorities. Particular emphasis has been given to specific aspects of the development process including lead generation and optimization, pharmacokinetics, ADME analysis, pharmacodynamics, toxicity and efficacy assessment, investigational new drug (IND) and new drug application (NDA) and the design of clinical trial and their phases. The book covers many aspects of modern personalized oncology and discusses economic aspects of our current system of developing new medicines and its impact on our societies and on future drug research. The author of this book, Dr. Link counts with more than 20 years of experience in biomedical research reflected in numerous publications, patents and key note and plenary presentations at international conferences. Interested readers, students and teachers should read this book as it provides a unique way to learn/teach about basic concepts in oncology and anti-cancer drug research.

This book explains how current medicines against cancer work and how we find new ones. It provides an easy-to-understand overview of current options to treat patients with cancer, which includes Surgery, Radiation therapy, Chemotherapy, Targeted therapy and Immunotherapy. The efficiency of all these treatments is limited by the capacity of cancer cells to escape therapy. This book explains the mechanisms of anti-cancer drug resistance and strategies to overcome it. The discovery and development process of a new drug is detailed beginning with the identification and validation of a therapeutic target, the identification of an inhibitor of the target and its subsequent preclinical and clinical development until its approval by regulatory authorities. Particular emphasis has been given to specific aspects of the development process including lead generation and optimization, pharmacokinetics, ADME analysis, pharmacodynamics, toxicity and efficacy assessment, investigational new drug (IND) and new drug application (NDA) and the design of clinical trial and their phases. The book covers many aspects of modern personalized oncology and discusses economic aspects of our current system of developing new medicines and its impact on our societies and on future drug research. The author of this book, Dr. Link counts with more than 20 years of experience in biomedical research reflected in numerous publications, patents and key note and plenary presentations at international conferences. Interested readers, students and teachers should read this book as it provides a unique way to learn/teach about basic concepts in oncology and anti-cancer drug research.

The reader will discover a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the history of the development of anticancer drugs deeply influenced by the cell concept of cancer and future directions for the development of new anticancer drugs. First, this book documents the scientific progress in biological science over the last 70 years and the influence this progress had in cancer research. Summaries and charts of important discoveries complete this overview. Furthermore, this book outlines the process of anticancer drug development with a focus on the characteristic drug groups of each era, related to advancements of chemistry and biological sciences. This book also provides brief mechanism of action of drugs, illustrated by comprehensive timelines and conceptual cartoons. This book finally sums up the limitations of the current anticancer drug development and seeks new directions for anticancer drug discovery, considering under the systemic view of cancer.

This unique volume traces the critically important pathway by which a "molecule" becomes an "anticancer agent. " The recognition following World War I that the administration of toxic chemicals such as nitrogen mustards in a controlled manner could shrink malignant tumor masses for relatively substantial periods of time gave great impetus to the search for molecules that would be lethal to specific cancer cells. Weare still actively engaged in that search today. The question is how to discover these "anticancer" molecules. Anticancer Drug Development Guide: Preclinical Screening, Clinical Trials, and Approval, Second Edition describes the evolution to the present of preclinical screening methods. The National Cancer Institute's high-throughput, in vitro disease-specific screen with 60 or more human tumor cell lines is used to search for molecules with novel mechanisms of action or activity against specific phenotypes. The Human Tumor Colony-Forming Assay (HTCA) uses fresh tumor biopsies as sources of cells that more nearly resemble the human disease. There is no doubt that the greatest successes of traditional chemotherapy have been in the leukemias and lymphomas. Since the earliest widely used in vivo drug screening models were the murine L 1210 and P388 leukemias, the community came to assume that these murine tumor models were appropriate to the discovery of "antileukemia" agents, but that other tumor models would be needed to discover drugs active against solid tumors.

“Frontiers in Anti-Cancer Drug Discovery” is an Ebook series devoted to publishing the latest and the most important advances in Anti-Cancer drug design and discovery. Eminent scientists write contributions on all areas of rational drug design and drug discovery including medicinal chemistry, in-silico drug design, combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, drug targets, recent important patents, and structure-activity relationships. The Ebook series should prove to be of interest to all pharmaceutical scientists involved in research in Anti-Cancer drug design and discovery. Each volume is devoted to the major advances in Anti-Cancer drug design and discovery. The Ebook series is essential reading to all scientists involved in drug design and discovery who wish to keep abreast of rapid and important developments in the field. The fifth volume of the series features chapters on the following topics: -Nutraceuticals and natural food products for cancer treatment -Pharmacogenomics in Anti-cancer treatment -Cancer stem cells -Potassium channel targeting for brain tumor treatment -Sorafenib in the management of hepatocellular carcinoma …and more.

The ultimate source of information on the design of new anticancer agents, emphasizing small molecules, this newest work covers recent notable successes resulting from the human genome and cancer genomics projects. These advances have provided information on targets involved in specific cancers that are leading to effective medicines for at least some of the common solid tumors. Unique sections explain the basic underlying principles of cancer drug development and provide a practical introduction to modern methods of drug design. Appealing to a broad audience, this is an excellent reference for translational researchers interested in cancer biology and medicine as well as students in pharmacy, pharmacology, or medicinal and biological chemistry and clinicians taking oncology options.* Covers both currently available drugs as well as those under development* Provides a clinical perspective on trials of new anticancer agents* Presents drug discovery examples through the use of case histories