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Anticancer Natural Alkaloids as Drug Bank Targeting Biomolecules

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Handbook of Smart Materials, Technologies, and Devices

Abstract

Alkaloids are low-molecular-weight nitrogen-containing natural products mostly found in plant and some microorganisms and restricted to few animals also. Historical evidence over time suggests the use of alkaloid both as a medicine and toxicant. The widespread distribution and their wide exhibit of structures make the classification of the alkaloids difficult. Several natural alkaloids display antiproliferation and antimetastasis consequences for different kinds of malignant growths both in vitro and in vivo. This section highlights on the naturally derived alkaloids with potential anticancer properties, highlighting the targeted biomolecules, viz., targeting nucleic acids of different conformation and its associated enzymes, cellular proteins, growth factors, carbohydrates, and lipids. The same natural alkaloids have been accounted to have different target biomolecules for the inhibition of progression and metastasis of specific cancer cells. Since cancer is a disease process driven by many aberrant oncoproteins related to multiple pathways of signal transduction, single-target therapeutic approach is not going to lead to a successful translational application. Thus, development of multitarget agents is an urgent quest for the treatment. Based on these informations, this study may be of prospective use in a framework to design novel anticancer drug molecules for improved therapeutic applications in the future. But further research and clinical trials are necessary before final acceptance.

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Acknowledgments

KB is indebted to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Government of India 37 (1538)/12/EMR-II; U.G.C., Government of India 41-1434/2012(SR) and DST-RFBR, 2017-19, DST/INT/RUS/RFBR/P-254 for the financial support. The author is also grateful to DST-PURSE, DST-FIST SR/FST/LSI-467/2010C) and PRG, University of Kalyani, 2021–22 for the partial financial support.

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  1. Department of Zoology, University of Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal, India

    Kakali Bhadra

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  1. Kakali Bhadra
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  1. Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA

    Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain

  2. School of Science, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Paolo Di Sia

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Bhadra, K. (2022). Anticancer Natural Alkaloids as Drug Bank Targeting Biomolecules. In: Hussain, C.M., Di Sia, P. (eds) Handbook of Smart Materials, Technologies, and Devices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84205-5_94

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