Selective Ligands for Non-Canonical DNA Structures: Do They Have a Future in Medicinal Chemistry?

Winning the war against cancer represents a major goal currently. During the last few years, we have witnessed a fundamental increase in basic knowledge in the biochemical and molecular biological fields connected to oncology, progressively unveiling more precise and selective cancer-related mechanisms and targets to be exploited. Meanwhile, the research and development spending for pharmaceuticals increased by almost an order of magnitude [1]. Even admitting the substantial steps forward thus far made, the rate of cancer death has not decreased accordingly and remains unacceptably high [2]. Hence, the need for novel anticancer strategies directed towards yet unexplored/poorly explored targets. The Special Issue, entitled “Selective Ligands for Non-canonical DNA Structures: Do They Have a Future in Medicinal Chemistry?”, aimed to examine the therapeutic opportunities and drawbacks exhibited by ligands designed to selectively bind non-canonical nucleic acid structures, such as G-quadruplexes (G4) and highly polymorphic guanine-rich structures, participating in telomere protection, gene expression regulation, and genomic instability induction [3,4].