A systematic and comprehensive review of the properties and synthesis of anticancer heterocyclic natural products

Abstract

Heterocyclic natural products are abundant in variety and have useful bioactivities. Cancer, being one of the most widespread sets of potentially lethal diseases, has attracted a great deal of attention to discovering cures for its various forms and severities. This review aims to give a general idea of bioactivities and the recently reported syntheses of a few heterocycle classes: furan/benzofuran derivatives, quinoline/isoquinoline derivatives, and indole/carbazole derivatives. A unique feature of this article is that the cytotoxicity against some cell lines, the mechanism of action, and their synthesis in the past decade have been reviewed in this article, allowing a remarkably holistic assessment of the compounds in question. Scalability and other synthetic traits have also been discussed wherever possible. It was found that muricatetrocin B, jimenezin, pancrastatin, quinocarcin, and aleutianamine have significant potential as chemotherapeutic agents and the synthesis of parent and analog molecules is worth optimizing.