PTK6 and neoplasm: Based on its pathogenesis, many targets have been shown to be useful for tumor therapy, which include topoisomerase (Top) (Liang et al., 2019), aurora kinases (Pradhan et al., 2021), breast tumor kinase (Brk) (Tsui and Miller, 2015), microtubule (Kaur et al., 2014) and ras-related protein (RalA) (Fan et al., 2021), etc. Different structures of α-carboline derivatives have been designed and synthesized to regulate these targets.