Antitumor antibiotics and low molecular weight immunomodifiers of microbial origin.

Antitumor antibiotics research has made great progress both in the development of new types of antitumor cytotoxic compounds with potential usefulness and in the development of effective derivatives and analogs of already proven compounds such as doxorubicin, bleomycin, and mitomycin. Such research has also been expanded to include the study of low molecular weight enzyme inhibitors and immunomodifiers of microbial origin, which, with their derivatives and analogs, can also be expected to increase the cure rate for cancer. Recent results of research to discover and learn about these compounds are described here, after a brief historical introduction.