## 1 Introduction  
Natural products (also known as secondary metabolites) were proven as a prolific resource for the discovery of bioactive hit and lead compounds in the early stages of drug discovery. Secondary metabolites are distinguished by being novel in terms of chemical structures and biological activities [1]. In principle, natural products frequently encompass three-dimensional scaffolds and various chiral centers that inevitably mediate their selective interactions with disease-relevant macromolecular targets. In the anticancer drug discovery pipeline, natural products are one of the most robust starting points for initiating the development of anticancer therapeutics. This was demonstrated by the remarkable clinical successes of paclitaxel, doxorubicin, vincristine, vinblastine, and many other eminent examples [2]. Additionally, natural product-derived anticancer agents have the advantage of being less toxic to normal cells than malignant ones. This should surely provide some impetus to uncover the biological effects of natural products and study their interactions with cancerous cells at the molecular level in order to better understand cancer biology and hypothesize rational strategies for controlling cancers. According to some ethobotanical literature data, _Pinus_ species have been used in folk medicine in Algeria [3] and Turkey [4], as well as many Islamic [5] (and many other) countries in the Cupisnique age, whether as analgesics [4], wound healers [4], or for their anti-inflammatory properties [4]. Pine-derived oleoresins comprise multiple varieties of terpenoids; they are the largest group of plant secondary metabolites with more than 30,000 known derivatives [6]. Terpenoids are biosynthesized from five-carbon isoprene units--namely, isopentyl diphosphate (IPP) and diallydiphosphahe (DPP)--via head-to-tail condensation catalyzed by prenyl transferase groups of enzymes in plant cells. Two units of IPP and DPP yield the basic cyclic geranyl diphosphate (GPP), which then condenses with another molecule of GPP to yield geranyl geranyl diphosphate (GGPP), the precursor of C20 diterpenes. After the construction of GGPP, a series of cyclization (via terpene synthases) and oxidation reactions occur in order to furnish various scaffolds. Diterpenoids are considered among the most ecologically useful traits in conifers, as they provide defense against pests and their associated pathogenic fungi [7]. As denoted from the name, pine oleoresin comprises a resin portion, known as rosin, and a volatile oil, known as turpentine. It has been proposed that turpentine oil functions as a solvent to facilitate the mobilization of resin constituents to injury sites. Meanwhile, rosin comprises various diterpene acids (known also as resin acids) and functions as an antipathogenic agent [8]. Resin acids have attracted the interest biologists, leading them to identify their biological effects and to elucidate their structure-activity relationships. Pimarane and abietane tricyclic scaffolds are the most abundant diterpenes in pine species. They have distinct biological activities as well as versatile applications in agriculture and medicine [9; 10; 11]. Abietic acid is a diterpenoid acid that has been isolated from different species of confierous plants belonging to the genus _Pinus_, such as _P. palustris_, _P. insularis_, and _P. sylvesteris_. Diverse biological activities have been reported for abiotic acid and its analogs, including anti-inflammatory [12; 13], anticonvulsant [14], anti-obesity [15], cytotoxic [16], antimycotic [16; 17], and antiviral activities [18]. Such bioactivities are correlated to specific interactions with relevant disease signaling mediators. For instance, the anti-inflammatory effect of abietic acid was proven to be mediated via attenuation of interleukin-1 beta in induced inflammatory models of human chondrocytes [13].