Nitrogen Mustard: a Promising Class of Anti-Cancer Chemotherapeutics – a Review

Abstract

The cancer tissue hypoxia regions are present with an acidic microenvironment that prevent the intake of various components like drugs, nutrients, and other metabolites, encouraging the resistance to various therapies. Chemotherapy, among all therapies, causes great off-target toxicity. Thus the focus of research is on the target drug delivery that ensures the efficacy, selectivity, and cytotoxicity within the tumor regions only. For this reason, many classes of chemotherapeutic drugs such as alkylating agents, antibiotics, antimetabolites, hormonal therapy, and other miscellaneous agents have been introduced. Although alkylating agents serve various sub-classes such as nitrosourea, nitrogen mustard, triazide, methanesulphonate, and ethylenimines, our review particularly focused on Nitrogen Mustard (NM). NM is one of the most widely used among all other classes since its high electrophilicity provides diversity in its reactivity and attachment to other synthetic and natural components.