Understanding and Improving Cancer Chemotherapy

Cancer remained one of the leading causes of mortality with 10 million deaths in 2020. The most widely used treatment modality is chemotherapy using platinum drugs. However, chemo-resistance in cancer cells and dose-limiting toxic side effects severely limit the efficacy of platinum-based therapy. We are working towards designing new anticancer agents to tackle the issues with current chemotherapeutic drugs. We recently identified a few small molecule HITs which exert anticancer activity through novel mechanism of action and have the potential to overcome chemo-resistance. Importantly, these agents showed excellent tumor inhibition properties in animal model. In the colloquium, I will discuss the design principle, synthesis and biological evaluation of these new class of chemotherapeutics.