Mini-review: nucleus-targeted ribonucleases as antitumor drugs.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in economically developed countries and the second leading cause of death in developing countries. This global burden of cancer continues to increase largely because of the aging and growth of the world population. Although very much progress has been attained in the development of new therapies, there is a clear need of more efficient and selective antitumor drugs for the effective treatment of many types of cancer. Among the different strategies developed to create new antitumor drugs, pleiotropic non-genotoxic effectors have gained interest since this approach is less susceptible to known resistance mechanisms. The cell nucleus is the subcellular compartment where the genetic information and the transcription machinery reside and accordingly where numerous therapeutic agents efficiently work. Hence, nuclear-targeted drugs are expected to kill cancer cells more directly and efficiently. In this review, we discuss the potential of nuclear-targeted drugs as antineoplastic therapeutics and reason the benefits of the strategy to endow ribonucleases with cytotoxic properties based on its targeting into the nucleus.