By Geoff Margison I am delighted to have had the opportunity to review this very useful compendium of the reactions of past, present and future antitumour agents with nucleic acids. At last, I thought, a book I can give to students who need to know, and clinicians who ought to know, how the agents they are using in the laboratory or clinic are thought to exert their biological effects on cells, and also what the future may hold in terms of DNA-interactive drugs. And they are almost all here, from widely used agents that transfer a simple methyl group to the still-developing and hence not-yet-proven-effcctive, complex oligonucleotides and polyheterocycles. There are chapters on the synthetic drugs including the alkylating agents and platinum-containing compounds, and on the naturally occurring antibiotic agents including the minor groove binding agents, (+)-CC-1065 and benzodiazepines and the intercalating anthracyclines, quinoxalines and neocarcinostatin. As well as containing a substantial amount of information, mostly on reaction mechanisms, target atoms within DNA and nucleotide sequence selectivity, much of it from the authors themselves, who are all recognised experts in their respective fields, the majority of chapters include a very useful and comprehensive list of literature references (and with titles!).
Many of the chapters benefitted from the inclusion of stereo diagrams of DNA binding, particularly that of Wang's on anthracyclins. These are really so informative that, at the risk of going permanently cross-eyed, I would have liked to see many more, but preferably in colour with those cheepie cardboard and tinted-cellophane specs you get.
Most of the chapters I found well written and logically presented. However, the section on lexitropsins was less easy to follow and it only had one stereo diagram! So, are there any reasons for not writing out an order now? Well, yes, perhaps a few tiny points: I was particularly disappointed that more space was not given to summaries of the types of tumours treated with, and also the dose-limiting toxicities of, the clinically used drugs: the glowing exception was in the chapters on the platinum drugs, which were exemplary in this respect. These chapters also included a substantial amount of information on resistance mechanisms and possible means of circumventing them. Again, other chapters would have benefitted from the inclusion of similar information, where, indeed, such things are known. Whilst I personally would have found these things useful, I also feel that many chemotherapy clinicians would have related to such information and would therefore be drawn in to a more complete understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the antitumour and cytotoxic effects.
The title is somewhat misleading, as in my Shorter Oxford English 'drug' implies agents in pharmaceutical use, and the last three chapters describe agents and concepts that are somewhat in their embryonic stage. This gives us a thoughtprovoking taste of things to come but such licence would also