Research advances in antitumor activities of pyrimidine derivatives

Pyrimidine derivatives have been the subject of much attention in pesticide and medicine fields owing to their unique biological properties. Particularly, a large number of these compounds have recently been reported to show substantial antitumor activities, and some of them have been investigated in clinical trials. Although these structurally novel compounds have a common chemical moiety of a pyrimidine ring, there are a variety of mechanisms of their antitumor action, such as, inhibition of cyclin-dependent-kinases, inhibition of protein tyrosine kinase, inhibition of carbonic anhydrases, inhibition of dihydrofolate reductase and disruption of microtubule assembly. In this paper, we described the latest advances in the research of such pyrimidine derivatives as antitumor drug according to their action on targets.