Recent Developments of Target Based Coumarin Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

Cancer is the second life-threatening disease worldwide, and it resulted in around 9.6 million deaths globally in 2018. The multidrug-resistant cancers and non-selectivity create an urge for the development of novel anticancer drugs with a diverse mechanism of action. Coumarin is one of the most widely used scaffolds for the development of highly effective anticancer agents. It has versatile anticancer profiles with diverse mechanisms to inhibit tumor progression. The facile synthetic strategies are also favoured for target-based coumarin derivatives. Structural Activity Relationship (SAR) studies determine anticancer potentials with minimal side effects through the substitution pattern of coumarin. A number of coumarin derivatives have been developed against the Galectin-1 (Gal-1), Carbonic anhydrases (CAs), Tubulin protein, and other essential targets for the treatment in cancer therapy. Therefore, in this review, we have mainly focused on different target based coumarin derivatives, and synthetic strategies.