Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Jan 31:2020:8602879.
doi: 10.1155/2020/8602879. eCollection 2020.

Phytochemicals as Potential Anticancer Drugs: Time to Ponder Nature's Bounty

Mohammad Arif Ashraf  1
Affiliations
Review

Phytochemicals as Potential Anticancer Drugs: Time to Ponder Nature's Bounty

Mohammad Arif Ashraf. Biomed Res Int. .

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been used from the beginning of human civilization, which is mostly evident from the ancient script and traditional herbal medicine recipe. Despite the historically enriched demonstration about the use of plant as therapeutics, the pharmaceutical industries lack interest on phytochemical research compared with synthetic drug. Mostly, the absence of information about plant-based medicinal therapeutics is responsible to draw the attention of researchers to think about natural products as potential drug for detrimental diseases, such as cancer. This review will cover about clinically successful plant-based anticancer drugs and underappreciated, but potential, drugs to bridge the information gap between plant biologists and clinical researchers. Additionally, unprecedented advancement of synthetic chemistry, omics study to pin point the target genes/proteins, and efficient drug delivery system have made it easier for researchers to develop a phytochemical as an efficient anticancer drug.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phytochemicals can be used as drugs based on medicinal plant database, omics study to find the target, and efficient drug delivery system.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Tay K.-C., Tan L. T.-H., Chan C. K., et al. Formononetin: a review of its anticancer potentials and mechanisms. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2019;10 doi: 10.3389/fphar.2019.00820. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shahriyari L., Komarova N. L. Symmetric vs. asymmetric stem cell divisions: an adaptation against cancer? PloS One. 2013;8 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076195.e76195 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bai J., Li Y., Zhang G. Cell cycle regulation and anticancer drug discovery. Cancer Biology & Medicine. 2017;14:p. 348. doi: 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2017.0033. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rayan A., Raiyn J., Falah M. Nature is the best source of anticancer drugs: indexing natural products for their anticancer bioactivity. PLoS One. 2017;12 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187925.e0187925 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fridlender M., Kapulnik Y., Koltai H. Plant derived substances with anti-cancer activity: from folklore to practice. Frontiers in Plant Science. 2015;6:p. 799. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2015.00799. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources