Cinnamic acid hybrids as anticancer agents: A mini‐review

Abstract

Cancer, as a long‐lasting and dramatic disease, affects almost one‐third of human beings globally. Chemotherapeutics play an important role in cancer treatment, but multidrug resistance and severe adverse effects have already become the main causes of failure in tumor chemotherapy. Therefore, it is an urgent need to develop novel chemotherapeutics. Cinnamic acid contains a ubiquitous α,β‐unsaturated acid moiety presenting potential therapeutic effects in the treatment of cancer as these derivatives could act on cancer cells by diverse mechanisms of action. Accordingly, cinnamic acid derivatives are critical scaffolds in discovering novel anticancer agents. This review provides a comprehensive overview of cinnamic acid hybrids as anticancer agents. The structure–activity relationship, as well as the mechanisms of action, are also discussed, covering articles published from 2012 to 2021.

Synthesis and antiproliferative activity of new thiazole hybrids with [3.3.0]furofuranone or tetrahydrofuran scaffolds

“…The reason for the preparation of cinnamate 7 lies in the fact that a significant number of cinnamic acid hybrids show antitumour activity. [17][18][19] The preparation of bioisostere 8 is shown in Scheme 2. D-Glucose was first converted to the protected aldehyde 7a using the procedure recently developed in our laboratory 20 (see the Supplementary Material for details).…”

Synthesis, Characterization, and Antiproliferative Properties of New Bio-Inspired Xanthylium Derivatives

“…Polyphenols and their synthetic analogs interfere in carcinogenesis by modulating and regulating multiple signaling pathways and transcription factors, membrane-associated receptor tyrosine kinases, fatty acid metabolism and lipid rafts or methylation, together with other emerging targets [ 5 ]. Various synthetic analogues of natural polyphenols demonstrated strong anticancer activity, including (–)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate analogues [ 6 ], synthetic anthocyanidins [ 7 ], or cinnamic acid derivatives [ 8 ]. Some analogues with known anticarcinogenic effect proved even higher stability to metabolic conversion and displayed comparable or higher antitumor activity than the parent compound [ 9 ].…”

Design and Synthesis of Coumarin Derivatives as Cytotoxic Agents through PI3K/AKT Signaling Pathway Inhibition in HL60 and HepG2 Cancer Cells

“…The presence of a ubiquitous α- and β-unsaturated acid moiety characterized by its potential therapeutic effects as an anti-cancer agent enabled cinnamic acid derivatives acting on cancerous cells by various mechanisms of action. Therefore, these compounds are critical scaffolds in discovering novel anti-cancer agents [ 45 ].…”