An insight into the therapeutic potential of piperazine-based anticancer agents

Abstract

The piperazine ring system is among the medicinally important nitrogen-containing heterocyclic ring systems and is exploited for the synthesis of various drug molecules. A number of FDA-approved anticancer drugs contain piperazine rings and thus it is considered as an attractive scaffold having extraordinary potential for the development of new anticancer agents. In recent decades there has been an alarming increase in the number of people suffering from cancerous diseases all over the world, which resulted in an extraordinary increase in research reports on new anticancer drug candidates. The aim of this article is to highlight the structural parameters imparting anticancer activity to piperazine derivatives and to indicate future perspectives for the discovery of new anticancer agents.