Although natural products have been used by man since time immemorial, it was only in the past century that active components of medicinal plants became available in chemically pure form. An impressive number of natural products have been introduced into medical practice, but such agents are utilized substantially more frequently as lead or model molecules for structure optimization and for the development of more potent or better tolerated drugs. A recent comprehensive review found that only 20.2% of the anticancer agents approved in the period 1981-2010 were purely synthetic, whereas 79.8% were natural products or inspired by natural products (D. J. Newman and G. M. Cragg, “ Natural products as sources of new drugs over the 30 years from 1981 to 2010” Journal of Natural Products, vol. 75, no. 3, pp. 311-335, 2012). This ratio of ‘drugs of natural origin’ is substantially lower for all the agents that were newly introduced in the same period, indicating that structures from nature are indispensable in anticancer lead-finding research.

We invite investigators to contribute original research papers and review papers that provide a novel interpretation of the role of nature in the anticancer drug discovery and development pipeline and stimulate a better understanding of the utilization of natural products with a view to the development of original drugs.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Recent experimental results facilitating the elucidation of the mechanisms of antiproliferative action of natural products
• Mechanism(s) of action of newly isolated and characterized plant compounds with anticancer properties
• Anticancer substances newly isolated from marine organisms
• Studies of the metabolism, transport, and pharmacokinetics of natural products with antiproliferative capacity
• Structure optimization studies starting from a natural product