Anticancer activity of essential oils: targeting of protein networks in cancer cells.

Cancer is a multifaceted and genomically complex disease and research over decades has gradually and sequentially shown that essential biological mechanisms including cell cycle arrest and apoptosis are deregulated. The benefits of essential oils from different plants have started to gain appreciation as evidenced by data obtained from cancer cell lines and xenografted mice. Encouraging results obtained from preclinical studies have attracted considerable attention and various phytochemicals have entered into clinical trials.