Role of plant derived bioactive compounds against cancer
Arpita Roy, Shreeja Datta, Karanpreet Singh Bhatia, Bhumika, Priyanka Jha, Ram Prasad
Abstract
Cancer is an uncontrolled division of cells that has been attributed to various factors due to the advancement in cell biology and widespread genomic studies. Traditional chemotherapy in which a single cause is targeted is not a viable option for cancer treatment as multiple factors like various genes or epigenetic factors are found to be responsible for cancer phenotype. Formation of tumor is due to the somatic mutations in genome, same phenotypic expression of various cancer types. Many times, chemotherapy drugs given in two different patients of similar types of cancer do not produce the same effect in both the patients due to different somatic mutations or different genes involved in the same cancer phenotype. Thus, mono-target therapy usually encounters more failures than successes. In the past decades, research has begun to understand the various genetic mutations involved in a variety of cancers and this knowledge could be used to guide a new generation of medicinal chemists to design and discover novel drug moieties which would be able to influence multiple targets involved in tumor expression. Combinatorial formulations (synthetic as well as natural) could be beneficial in such a scenario. In this review, mechanisms of cancer, conventional methods to treat cancer and various plant secondary metabolites for effective treatment of cancer have been discussed.