Current Discovery Progress of Some Emerging Anti-infective Chalcones: Highlights from 2016 to 2017.

The anti-infective potentials of the natural products are very well known for centuries and are a part of traditional healing. The foremost therapeutic classes include flavones, isoflavones, flavonols, flavanones, flavanols, proanthocyanidins, anthocyanidins, chalcones, and aurones. The chalcone or 1,3-diphenyl-2E-propene-1-one represents the class of natural products which are comprised of benzylideneacetophenone function; i.e. two aromatic moieties linked together by an α, ß-unsaturated carbonyl bridge comprising three-carbons. At present, chalcone is one of the privileged scaffolds that can be synthesized in the laboratory to derive different pharmacologically active compounds. This article is the continued form of the previously published work on anti-infective perspectives of chalcones (highlighted till 2015). The current work emphasizes on the discovery process of the chalcone in the period of 2016 to 2017 on malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, filaria, tuberculosis, netamodes, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and miscellaneous conditions. This review comprehensively focuses on the latest progress related with the anti-infective chalcones. The content includes the crucial structural features of chalcone scaffold including structure-activity relationship(s) along with their plausible mechanism of action(s) from the duration Jan 2016 to Dec 2017. This literature will be of prime interest to medicinal chemists in getting ideas and concepts for better rational development of potential anti-infective inhibitors.

Mutant B-Raf Kinase Inhibitors as Anticancer Agents.

The Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway involves various kinases in which each kinase is associated with one another through signals and regulates cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis. This pathway is dysregulated almost in all cancers due to the amplification and genetic mutation of various components of the pathway. The genetic mutations have been reported to cause drug resistance to the current chemotherapy of melanomas. B-Raf is one of the most commonly mutated proto-oncogenes and plays a significant role in the development of numerous cancers of high clinical impact. Therefore, mutant B-Raf kinase may be a promising therapeutic target for the development of novel anticancer drugs. Many BRAF inhibitors discovered during the last decade showed promising anticancer activity, especially on tumors that harbor BRAFV600E mutations. Currently, vemurafenib and dabrafenib are USFDA approved drugs used as B-Raf inhibitors. Few drugs which are under clinical development phases such as LGX818, GDC0879, XL281, ARQ736, PLX3603 (RO5212054), and RAF265 etc. pave the path for further designing of B-Raf inhibitors. The present review focuses primarily on the Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway with mutant B-Raf as a therapeutic target for anticancer drug development. The essential pharmacophoric features of B-Raf inhibitors, their structure activity relationships (SARs) and molecules under clinical trials have been highlighted.