Informatics of drug synergism in naturally occurring anticancer agents

Cancer is a multi-factorial disease resulting in uncontrolled division of body cells, with difficult and complex suppression. The main treatment strategy for this disease depends on killing of tumor cells that usually exist in the proximity of normal body cells. During the course of treatment, the healthy cells should not be affected by the toxic doses of the drug. Therefore, it seems that combination drug therapy is a suitable solution to address the mentioned concern. Indeed the use of multiple drugs with different actions and/or targets, in order to overcome the tumor cells, can lead to decreased drug effective dose and increased protection of normal cells against antitumor drugs. This review is focused on informatics applications in cancer combination drug therapy. At first, a brief description of recent findings on biology of resistance to cytotoxic agents is covered. Then, combinational drug therapy in cancer treatment, cheminformatics applications of synergistic compounds in cancer therapy, strategies used to overcome MDR (Multi Drug Resistance) and combinational drug therapy in cancer treatment have been discussed in the continuation. Natural compounds synergistic with anticancer agents have been reviewed in the following topics and lastly, the recent patents in the related area of combinational therapy are briefed.