LAUSR

The fact that cancer is the greatest challenge of the medicine of the twenty-first century is undebatable. Moreover it represent a hot topic not only in the medico-pharmaceutical research but scientist belonging to other different connected fields like chemistry, physics, informatics work together in order to find a good strategy to defeat this hard-to-beat enemy. The latest statistic of WHO published in September 2018 details the fact that cancer is the second leading cause of death globally. Up to date the most common approaches include: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy. It is well known the fact that Plant Kingdom have played a vital role in the design of active chemotherapeutic agents. In the history of natural compounds used in clinical trials for the cytotoxic activity they are some well known ‘protagonists’ including: vinca alkaloids, paclitaxel, homoharringtonine and their derivatives. Also an increased number of semisynthetic derivatives of plant secondary metabolites are in clinical trials for different types of cancer. FDA data show that approximately 40% of the approved molecules in the pharmaceutical market are natural compounds or their chemical derivatives from which, 74% are employed in wellestablished protocols of anticancer therapy. Moreover recent studies show that a significant number of natural compounds are ‘cancer-selective’ presenting antiproliferative, pro-apoptotic, cytotoxic potential against cancerous cells without any effect against normal, healthy cells. Because the biodiversity of our planet has not been fully exploited, Plant Kingdom represent a big pool for the discovery of anti-cancer agents.