School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2025
Abstract
Despite decades of research, cancer continues to be a disease of great concern to millions of people around the world. It has been responsible for a total of 609,820 deaths in the U.S. alone in 2023. Over the years, many drugs have been developed to remove or reduce the disease’s impact, all with varying mechanisms of action and side effects. One class of these drugs is small-molecule mitotic inhibitors. These drugs inhibit cancer cell mitosis or self-replication, impeding cell proliferation and eventually leading to cell death. In this paper, small-molecule mitotic inhibitors are discussed and classified through their discovery, underlying chemistry, and mechanism(s) of action. The binding/inhibition of microtubule-related proteins, DNA damage through the inhibition of Checkpoint Kinase 1 protein, and the inhibition of mitotic kinase proteins are discussed in terms of their anticancer activity to provide an overview of a variety of mitotic inhibitors currently commercially available or under investigation, including those in ongoing clinical trial. Clinical trials for anti-mitotic agents are discussed to track research progress, gauge current understanding, and identify possible future prospects. Additionally, antibody–drug conjugates that use mitotic inhibitors as cytotoxic payloads are discussed as possible ways of administering effective anticancer treatments with minimal toxicity.
Recommended Citation
Salinas, Y., Chauhan, S. C., & Bandyopadhyay, D. (2025). Small-Molecule Mitotic Inhibitors as Anticancer Agents: Discovery, Classification, Mechanisms of Action, and Clinical Trials. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 26(7), 3279. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms26073279
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
DOI
10.3390/ijms26073279
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Immunology and Microbiology
Comments
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).