Abstract
Natural coumarins and their derivatives isolated from various plants or microorganisms have inherent antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and anticancer properties among many biological activities. Some of these coumarins and their derivatives lead to self-programmed cancer cell death (apoptosis) via different mechanisms, which will be discussed. The link between bacterial and viral infections to cancer compels us to highlight fascinating reports from coumarin isolation from microorganisms; comment on the recent bioavailability studies of natural or derived coumarins; and discuss our perspectives with respect to bioisosterism in coumarins, p-glycoprotein inhibition and covalent modification, and bioprobes. Overall, this review hopes to stimulate and offer in particular medicinal chemists and the reader in general an outlook on natural coumarins and their derivatives with potential for cancer therapy.
Supplementary data
To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at:www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/epi-2016-0184
Acknowledgments
JM is supported by the Tokyo Biochemical Research Foundation (TBRF) post-doctoral fellowship for Asian researchers and is grateful to Prof. Hideaki Fujita and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Nagasaki International University for access to their research facilities. MD to Brain Korea (BK) 21 Plus program, Korea.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
The funding and support provided to MD from the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Korea and the Tumor Microenvironment GCRC (2011-0030001) from the National Research Foundation funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea. Furthermore, MD acknowledges the support of the Creative-Pioneering Researchers Program through Seoul National University (Funding number: 370C-20160062). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.