AUTHOR=Basmadjian Christine , Zhao Qian , Bentouhami Embarek , Djehal Amel , Nebigil Canan G. , Johnson Roger A. , Serova Maria , de Gramont Armand , Faivre Sandrine , Raymond Eric , Désaubry Laurent G. TITLE=Cancer wars: natural products strike back JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=2 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2014.00020 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2014.00020 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

Natural products have historically been a mainstay source of anticancer drugs, but in the 90's they fell out of favor in pharmaceutical companies with the emergence of targeted therapies, which rely on antibodies or small synthetic molecules identified by high throughput screening. Although targeted therapies greatly improved the treatment of a few cancers, the benefit has remained disappointing for many solid tumors, which revitalized the interest in natural products. With the approval of rapamycin in 2007, 12 novel natural product derivatives have been brought to market. The present review describes the discovery and development of these new anticancer drugs and highlights the peculiarities of natural product and new trends in this exciting field of drug discovery.