ABSTRACT

Xanthone derivatives are involved in a multiplicity of pharmacological activities, which reects their large structural and chemical variety. Among the documented activities are tuberculostatic, antimycotic, antimalarial (Riscoe et al. 2005), antiplatelet, antithrombotic, anti-inammatory, antiallergic, antitumor, antimutagenic, and antioxidant (Pinto et al. 2005; Rodrigues et al. 2010). Xanthone pharmacological research has been particularly successful in cancer (Pinto et al. 2005). In fact, several xanthone derivatives have been described as antitumor agents. They are the xanthone precursor as well as oxygenated, sulfonated, glycosylated, and prenylated xanthones. These derivatives show “in vitro” growth-inhibitory activity on a remarkable range of tumor cell lines such as leukemia, multiple myeloma, breast adenocarcinoma, melanoma, hepatoma, glioma, neuroblastoma, pheochromocytoma, broblasts tumor cells, brosarcoma, epithelial tumor cells, Friend tumor cells, and carcinomas from many origins such as oral squamous cell, colon, ovarian, uterine, prostate, lung, liver, stomach, renal, pancreatic, CNS, colorectal, bladder, adrenocortical, and nasopharynx epidermoid (Pinto et al. 2005).