Kummalue Tanawan
Department of Clinical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10700, Thailand.
J Med Assoc Thai. 2005 Nov;88(11):1725-34.
Herbs have been considered natural and valuable sources for anticancer drug discovery. Herbal medicine has been prescribed in many countries over centuries for treating various diseases including infectious and malignant diseases. Nowadays, many of the drugs that have been used for treatment of malignant diseases are derived from natural products such as Taxol, a natural product isolated initially from Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia). This review article describes research on molecular mechanisms, especially cytotoxic effect of natural products from plant sources, primarily preclinical studies, involving human lung cancer cells in vitro for providing more knowledge and issues for potential drug development from medicinal herbs in the future.
草药一直被视为抗癌药物发现的天然且有价值的来源。几个世纪以来，许多国家都开草药来治疗包括传染病和恶性疾病在内的各种疾病。如今，许多用于治疗恶性疾病的药物都源自天然产物，如紫杉醇，它最初是从太平洋紫杉（短叶红豆杉）中分离出来的一种天然产物。这篇综述文章描述了关于分子机制的研究，特别是植物来源天然产物的细胞毒性作用，主要是临床前研究，涉及体外培养的人肺癌细胞，以便为未来从草药中开发潜在药物提供更多知识和问题。
