Oxidative Stress in Cancer: Therapeutic Implications of Small-Molecule Kinase Inhibitors

Cancer-targeted therapeutics have heavily relied on developing small-molecule kinase inhibitors as anticancer agents in the last two decades. The main reason for such attention lies in the fact that kinase dysregulation is the most common feature noticeable across a wide spectrum of cancers. Numerous investigations have produced increasing evidence projecting kinases as promising drug targets. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved 53 small-molecule kinase inhibitors as anticancer agents until recently. Currently, many such inhibitors are in clinical trials for cancer and other pathologies. As these novel inhibitors are being developed, relentless efforts are devoted to understand their mechanisms of action. Accumulating evidence has revealed that most kinase inhibitors augment free radical production which further activates various pathways to induce cell death. However, this book chapter discusses small-molecule kinase inhibitors exhibiting reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent mechanisms of cancer cell death.