Recent advances on anticancer activity of coumarin derivatives

Coumarin derivatives are important class of natural plant metabolites that offer variety of biological activities. They can also be derived synthetically, and a wide variety of synthetic coumarin derivatives (azoles, sulfonyl, furan, pyrazole etc) have shown promising anticancer, antitumor and anti-proliferative activities. Coumarin derivatives are not only effective anticancer agents, but also possess minimum side effects. On the basis of different substitution patterns, these potents have displayed tremendous capability to regulate the potential anticancer activities. In view of the above, efforts have been made by the scientists to develop its scaffolds that possess minimal side effects. This review article covers the recent developments of coumarin derivatives that are biologically active against various cancer cell lines. Further, it also highlights the evaluation of these active candidates via in vivo, in vitro, MTT assay. The ongoing developments in the discovery of novel anti-cancer agents and their effectiveness using Structural Activity Relationship is also discussed in detail.