Pyran is an oxygen-containing heterocyclic moiety, which exhibits an array of pharmacological properties. Pyran is also one of the important structural subunits found widely in natural products, e.g. coumarins, benzopyrans, sugars, flavonoids, xanthones, etc. The diverse anticancer capabilities of pyrans have been additionally evidenced by the fact that this heterocycle has recently been a focal point for researchers worldwide. This review provides a summary of pyran-based anticancer compounds, with emphasis on the past 10 years. It focuses on advancements in the field of naturally occurring pyrans as anticancer agents. The discussion also includes structure–activity relationships, along with the structures of the most promising molecules, their biological activities against several human cancer cell lines, as well as mechanistic insights discovered through the pharmacological evaluation and molecular modeling of pyran-based molecules. The promising activities revealed by these pyran-based scaffolds undoubtedly place them at the forefront for the discovery of prospective drug candidates. Thus, they could therefore be of great interest to researchers working on the synthesis of antitumour drug candidates.

Scientific community is striving to understand the role of heterocycles and fused heterocycles in drug discovery programme due to its impact on multi-drug resistance (MDR) of anticancer drugs. Architecting of various scaffolds for cancer treatment has become gradually increased in many years. Till now there is no treatment which is so proficient that it can cure the cancer from the roots. Hence, it is very necessary to design novel anticancer agents with minimum side effects. Synthesis of hybrids from natural leads is one of the rationale approach in medicinal chemistry. It remains a big challenge to invent new efficient drugs to beat cancer. The design and synthesis of fused molecules as anticancer agents is one of the great innovations of modern era. In drug discovery archetype a variety of heterocycles has been considered for the development of novel lead compounds. This article presents some recent advancement in the field of anticancer heterocyclic agents all around the world and also attracted the structure activity relationship along with the structure of the most promising molecules along with IC50 values against various human cancer cell lines.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which chiefly originatesfroma retrovirus named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), has impacted about 70 million people worldwide. Even though several advances have been made in the field of antiretroviral combination therapy, HIV is still responsible for a considerable number of deaths in Africa. The current antiretroviral therapies have achieved success in providing instant HIV suppression but with countless undesirable adverse effects. Presently, the biodiversity of the plant kingdom is being explored by several researchers for the discovery of potent anti-HIV drugs with different mechanisms of action. The primary challenge is to afford a treatment that is free from any sort of risk of drug resistance and serious side effects. Hence, there is a strong demand to evaluate drugs derived from plants as well as their derivatives. Several plants, such as Andrographis paniculata, Dioscorea bulbifera, Aegle marmelos, Wistaria floribunda, Lindera chunii, Xanthoceras sorbifolia and others have displayed significant anti-HIV activity. Here, weattempt to summarize the main results, which focus on the structures of most potent plant-based natural products having anti-HIV activity along with their mechanisms of action and IC₅₀ values, structure-activity-relationships and important key findings.

The molecular hybridization (MH) is a strategy of rational design of such ligands or prototypes based on the recognition of pharmacophoric sub-units in the molecular structure of two or more known bioactive derivatives which, through the adequate fusion of these sub-units, lead to the design of new hybrid architectures that maintain pre-selected characteristics of the original templates. The concept of molecular hybridization and the promises/challenges associated with these hybrid molecules along with recent advances on anticancer hybrids and critical discussions on the future aspects of the hybrid drugs have already been presented through a number of reports. However, this article presents the structures of potent hybrids reported during the last two decades along with a detailed account of the patent literature. Significant number of patents on the molecules designed through this valuable drug design technique clearly highlight the present focus of the researchers all around the globe towards hybrid molecules capable of amplifying the effect of individual functionalities through action on another bio target or to interact with multiple targets as one single molecule lowering the risk of drug-drug interactions and minimizing the drug resistance. This review article basically emphasizes the patent literature along with an overview of potent hybrid structures, their IC₅₀ /GI₅₀ values against the various cell lines employed. The present compilation can be utilized as a guide for the medicinal chemists focusing on this area of drug design.

In the present study, a series of 2,4-diarylpyrano[3,2-c]chromen-5(4H)-ones were synthesised and evaluated as antiproliferative agents. The compounds were evaluated against a panel of human cancer cell lines. CH-1 exhibited significant cytoxicity against HCT 116 cell lines with an IC50 value of 1.4 and 4.3 µM against "MiaPaCa-2" cell lines. The compound CH-1 was found to induce apoptosis as evidenced by phase contrast microscopy, Hoechst 33258 staining and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) loss. The cell phase distribution studies indicated that the apoptotic population increased from 10.22% in the control sample to 57.19% in a sample treated with 20 µM compound CH-1.