Role of organic carbamates in anticancer drug design

Abstract

Organic carbamates are the stable class of compounds derived from the unstable carbamic acid (H2N-COOH) by the substitution of amino and acid ends through various kinds of structurally diverse alkyl/aryl, aryl-alkyl or substituted alkyl/aryl, and aryl-alkyl groups, and are identified by the presence of the linkage -O-CO-NH- (Adams and Baron 1965; Chaturvedi 2003, 2011, 2012; Chaturvedi and Ray 2007a, b). When the carbamate linkage is present in a cyclic system, this class of compounds is referred to as cyclic carbamates (Ager et al. 1996; Arya and Qin 2000; Johnson and Evans 2000). When the carbamate group is attached to any inorganic atom, either metal or nonmetal, such compounds are referred to as inorganic carbamates (Aoki et al. 2001; Boyle et al. 1992).