A simple and reliable approach for assessing anticancer activity in vitro

Cancer patients need better anticancer drugs, and medicinal chemistry can play a critical role in the discovery of these drugs. For an efficient drug discovery process, chemists working on the synthesis of potential anticancer agents need to use reliable screening methods. These methods should not only detect the compounds with the highest therapeutic potential, but should also predict whether such potential is high enough to deserve additional attention. Unfortunately, the current strategies for assessing anticancer activity in vitro are unable to do this reliably. This review article analyzes these strategies and describes an alternative screening approach. It is based on establishing suitable experimental conditions to detect compounds that improve the selective cytotoxicity of the drugs used in cancer therapy. This patient-oriented approach is easy to implement and may help medicinal chemists, and other researchers involved in cancer drug discovery, assess in vitro anticancer activity more reliably.