Recent Developments of Target-Based Benzimidazole Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

Cancer is one of the major life burdens and around 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million deaths have been estimated in 2018 globally. Recent reports of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that about one in six death cases globally is mainly due to cancer. Hence, the development of efficacious drugs with novel mechanisms is necessary for various cancer types. The chemotherapy drug resistance and non-selectivity toward targets have turned the current cancer research on to the highly emerging selective targets for the development of potential anticancer agents. Benzimidazole is regarded as an essential pharmacophore of the cancer research because of wide anticancer potentials with versatile mechanisms to inhibit the tumor progression and also facile synthetic strategies for an easy synthesis of various benzimidazole derivatives. The selective anticancer potentials also depend on the substitution of the benzimidazole nucleus. Therefore, it would lead to providing a path for the development of novel target-specific and highly effective benzimidazole-based anticancer agents.