Anticancer Agents from Natural Products, 2nd ed. by Gordon M. Cragg, David G.I. Kingston, and David J. Newman, 2011.

The approach to drug discovery from natural sources has yielded many important new pharmaceuticals inaccessible by other routes. In many cases the isolated natural product may not be an effective drug for any of several reasons, but it nevertheless may become a drug through chemical modification or have a novel pharmacophore for future drug design. In summarizing the status of natural products as cancer chemotherapeutics, this book covers current drugs in advanced preclinical and clinical development; addresses the applications of synthetic and medicinal chemistry to the preparation of analogs with enhanced activities; focuses on the development of effective drugs through antibody-directed targeted delivery of potent cytotoxins to tumor cells; and discusses novel drug discovery through combinatorial biosynthesis and genome mining. Hardcover, 767 pages.