Recent Advances for the Synthesis of Selenium-containing Small Molecules as Potent Antitumor Agents

Selenium-containing small molecules have attracted considerable attention of chemical and medicinal researchers owing to their various biological activities, such as antitumor effects, cardiovascular protection, antibacterial or antiviral effects, immunoregulation and nerve protection, among which the most promising area is antineoplasm. In the past several decades, different kinds of organoselenium compounds, such as selenides, seleno(iso)cyanates, substituted selenoureas, selenious esters and Se-containing heterocycles have been reported as candidates of anti-cancer agents. Current reviews of Se-containing anticancer compounds mainly concerned about the investigation of their bioactivities, whereas, few attention has been addressed on their synthetic approaches. Herein, we summarized methodologies recently developed to synthesize organoselenium compounds with potent antineoplastic properties, which would be helpful for further design and synthesis of new bioactive Se-containing molecules with diverse structural features.