Recent Progress in the Development of Small Molecule c-Met Inhibitors

C-Met, also referred to as Hepatocyte Growth Factor Receptor (HGFR), is a heterodimeric receptor tyrosine kinase. It has been determined that c-Met gene mutations, overexpression, and amplification also occur in a variety of human tumor types, and these events are closely related to the aberrant activation of the HGF/c-Met signaling pathway. Meanwhile, high c-Met expression is closely associated with poor prognosis in cancer patients. The c-Met kinase has emerged as an attractive target for developing antitumor agents. In this review, we cover the recent advances on the small molecule c-Met inhibitors discovered from 2018 until now, with a main focus on the rational design, synthesis and structureactivity relationship analysis.