For Publishers
DiscoveryMetadataPeer reviewHostingPublishing
For Researchers
JoinPublishReviewCollect
Register
Blog
About
Search
Advanced search
My ScienceOpen
Search
For Publishers
For Researchers
Blog
About
131
views
205
references
 Top references
cited by
47
    
0 reviews
 Review
0
comments
 Comment
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      174
      similar
       All similar
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Anti-cancer natural products isolated from chinese medicinal herbs

      review-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          In recent years, a number of natural products isolated from Chinese herbs have been found to inhibit proliferation, induce apoptosis, suppress angiogenesis, retard metastasis and enhance chemotherapy, exhibiting anti-cancer potential both in vitro and in vivo. This article summarizes recent advances in in vitro and in vivo research on the anti-cancer effects and related mechanisms of some promising natural products. These natural products are also reviewed for their therapeutic potentials, including flavonoids (gambogic acid, curcumin, wogonin and silibinin), alkaloids (berberine), terpenes (artemisinin, β-elemene, oridonin, triptolide, and ursolic acid), quinones (shikonin and emodin) and saponins (ginsenoside Rg 3), which are isolated from Chinese medicinal herbs. In particular, the discovery of the new use of artemisinin derivatives as excellent anti-cancer drugs is also reviewed.

          Related collections

          Most cited references205

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          New therapeutic aspects of flavones: the anticancer properties of Scutellaria and its main active constituents Wogonin, Baicalein and Baicalin.

          Min Li‐Weber (2009)
          Traditional Chinese medicines have been recently recognized as a new source of anticancer drugs and new chemotherapy adjuvant to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy and to ameliorate the side effects of cancer chemotherapies however their healing mechanisms are still largely unknown. Scutellaria baicalensis is one of the most popular and multi-purpose herb used in China traditionally for treatment of inflammation, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and bacterial and viral infections. Accumulating evidence demonstrate that Scutellaria also possesses potent anticancer activities. The bioactive components of Scutellaria have been confirmed to be flavones. The major constituents of Scutellaria baicalensis are Wogonin, Baicalein and Baicalin. These phytochemicals are not only cytostatic but also cytotoxic to various human tumor cell lines in vitro and inhibit tumor growth in vivo. Most importantly, they show almost no or minor toxicity to normal epithelial and normal peripheral blood and myeloid cells. The antitumor functions of these flavones are largely due to their abilities to scavenge oxidative radicals, to attenuate NF-kappaB activity, to inhibit several genes important for regulation of the cell cycle, to suppress COX-2 gene expression and to prevent viral infections. The tumor-selectivity of Wogonin has recently been demonstrated to be due to its ability to differentially modulate the oxidation-reduction status of malignant vs. normal lymphocytic cells and to preferentially induce phospholipase C gamma 1, a key enzyme involved in Ca(2+) signaling, through H(2)O(2) signaling in malignant lymphocytes. This review is aimed to summarize the research results obtained since the last 20 years and to highlight the recently discovered molecular mechanisms.
          Article 0 comments Cited 247 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            A phase I/II study of gemcitabine-based chemotherapy plus curcumin for patients with gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer.

            Tsutomu Chiba, Yoshiya Kawaguchi, Masanori Asada … (2011)
            Curcumin, a plant-derived natural polyphenol, could be a promising anti-cancer drug and shows synergic effects with cytotoxic agents. We evaluated the safety and feasibility of combination therapy using curcumin with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. Gemcitabine-resistant patients with pancreatic cancer received 8 g oral curcumin daily in combination with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. The primary endpoint was safety for phase I and feasibility of oral curcumin for phase II study. Twenty-one patients were enrolled. No dose-limiting toxicities were observed in the phase I study and oral curcumin 8 g/day was selected as the recommended dose for the phase II study. No patients were withdrawn from this study because of the intolerability of curcumin, which met the primary endpoint of the phase II study, and the median compliance rate of oral curcumin was 100% (Range 79-100%). Median survival time after initiation of curcumin was 161 days (95% confidence interval 109-223 days) and 1-year survival rate was 19% (4.4-41.4%). Plasma curcumin levels ranged from 29 to 412 ng/ml in five patients tested. Combination therapy using 8 g oral curcumin daily with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy was safe and feasible in patients with pancreatic cancer and warrants further investigation into its efficacy.
            Article 0 comments Cited 131 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Shikonin circumvents cancer drug resistance by induction of a necroptotic death.

              Qiangrong Pan, Shuang Qiu, Xun Hu … (2007)
              Defect in apoptotic signaling and up-regulation of drug transporters in cancer cells significantly limits the effectiveness of cancer chemotherapy. We propose that an agent inducing non-apoptotic cell death may overcome cancer drug resistance and showed that shikonin, a naturally occurring naphthoquinone, induced a cell death in MCF-7 and HEK293 distinct from apoptosis and characterized with (a) a morphology of necrotic cell death; (b) loss of plasma membrane integrity; (c) loss of mitochondrial membrane potentials; (d) activation of autophagy as a downstream consequence of cell death, but not a contributing factor; (e) elevation of reactive oxygen species with no critical roles contributing to cell death; and (f) that the cell death was prevented by a small molecule, necrostatin-1, that specifically prevents cells from necroptosis. The characteristics fully comply with those of necroptosis, a basic cell-death pathway recently identified by Degterev et al. with potential relevance to human pathology. Furthermore, we proved that shikonin showed a similar potency toward drug-sensitive cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and HEK293) and their drug-resistant lines overexpressing P-glycoprotein, Bcl-2, or Bcl-x(L), which account for most of the clinical cancer drug resistance. To our best knowledge, this is the first report to document the induction of necroptosis by a small molecular compound to circumvent cancer drug resistance.
              Article 0 comments Cited 128 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
                Bookmark
                All references

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Chin Med
                Title: Chinese Medicine
                Publisher: BioMed Central
                ISSN (Electronic): 1749-8546
                Publication date Collection: 2011
                Publication date (Electronic): 22 July 2011
                Volume: 6
                Page: 27
                Affiliations
                [1 ]State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, University of Macau, Av. Padre Toma's Pereira S.J., Taipa, Macao SAR, China
                [2 ]Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Av. Padre Toma's Pereira S.J., Taipa, Macao SAR, China
                [3 ]College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Rd., Binjiang Dist., Hangzhou 310053, Zhejiang, China
                [4 ]College of Pharmacy, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No.1 Huatuo Rd., Shangjie University Town, Fuzhou 350108, Fujian, China
                Article
                Publisher ID: 1749-8546-6-27
                DOI: 10.1186/1749-8546-6-27
                PMC ID: 3149025
                PubMed ID: 21777476
                SO-VID: 34e50eb7-9fc5-48d3-a06b-6e1fbb889545
                Copyright © Copyright ©2011 Tan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
                License:

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                Date received : 23 February 2011
                Date accepted : 22 July 2011
                Categories
                Subject: Review

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Complementary & Alternative medicine
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Complementary & Alternative medicine

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_

                Similar content174

                See all similar

                Cited by108

                See all cited by

                Most referenced authors2,103

                See all reference authors