Natural products (NPs) are a promising source of anticancer drugs. In past decades, numerous cytotoxic compounds derived from natural sources, such as dactinomycin and paclitaxel (taxol), have been successfully developed into front-line anticancer drugs in clinics. However, the emergence of drug resistance in recent years has reduced the effectiveness of anticancer drugs, affecting the lives of millions of cancer patients. Hence, it is important to generate compounds with distinct mechanisms of action that elicit selective toxicity to cancer cells. To address this, our team aims to employ synthetic biology to derivatise NPs to create analogues that possess more potent anticancer properties.