Frank E. Koehn
Editor
2013
Since the dawn of human medicine, compounds derived from animals, plants, and microbes have been used to treat disease. The treatment of cancer in particular has been profoundly impacted. No other disease area, with the exception of anti-infectives, has seen a greater proportion of its small molecule drugs sourced directly from natural products. The list of natural product cancer therapeutics is impressive— Vinca alkaloids, anthracycline antitumor antibiotics, camptothecins, epothilones, podophyllotoxins, rapamycin mTOR inhibitors, taxanes, to name a few. Indeed, entire drug families, chemical and mechanistic classes of anticancer agents, have their origins in the secondary metabolites produced by microbes, plants, and now recently even marine organisms.