Current Directions and Trends of Cancer Chemotherapy: An Overview of the Recently Approved Small-Molecules Anticancer Drugs in the Past Decade |Biomedgrid

Background: The everlasting challenge to develop more potent, more selective and less toxic chemotherapeutic antitumor drugs constitutes a substantial weapon to defeat the continuous multidrug resistance characteristics of many cancers. Therefore, the need for the discovery and development of unprecedented antineoplastics drugs still exists. Results: In this mini review a survey of the novel targets and trends in cancer chemotherapy has been investigated to explore the potential therapeutic lines and treatment protocols. 70 novel small-molecule antineoplastic were studied and categorized according to their mode of action, medicinal use, year of FDA-approval as well as chemical structures. The vast majority of these recently approved drugs over the past decade are kinase inhibitors while the hormone antagonists represent the minority of these novel drugs. The two years of 2018 and 2020 represent the years of the highest approval numbers of small-molecules anticancer drugs with 10 approved drugs, while the year of 2016 is the one with the least number of just 2 newly approved drugs.