Mehmood Tahir, Maryam Amara, Ghramh Hamed A, Khan Muhammad, Ma Tonghui
College of Basic Medical Sciences, Dalian Medical University, Dalian 116044, China.
Research Center for Advanced Materials Science, King Khalid University, Abha 61413, P.O. Box 9004, Saudi Arabia.
Molecules. 2017 Jun 21;22(6):1013. doi: 10.3390/molecules22061013.
Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death worldwide. The development of drugs to target only one specific signaling pathway has limited therapeutic success. Developing chemotherapeutics to target multiple signaling pathways has emerged as a new prototype for cancer treatment. Deoxyelephantopin (DET) and isodeoxyelephantopin (IDET) are sesquiterpene lactone components of "", traditional Chinese medicinal herbs that have long been used as folk medicines to treat liver diseases, diabetes, diuresis, bronchitis, fever, diarrhea, dysentery, cancer, and inflammation. Recently, the anticancer activity of DET and IDET has been widely investigated. Here, our aim is to review the current status of DET and IDET, and discuss their anticancer activity with specific emphasis on molecular targets and mechanisms used by these compounds to trigger apoptosis pathways which may help to further design and conduct research to develop them as lead therapeutic drugs for cancer treatments. The literature has shown that DET and IDET induce apoptosis through multiple signaling pathways which are deregulated in cancer cells and suggested that by targeting multiple pathways simultaneously, these compounds could selectively kill cancer cells. This review suggests that DET and IDET hold promising anticancer activity but additional studies and clinical trials are needed to validate and understand their therapeutic effect to develop them into potent therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.
癌症是全球第二大死因。仅针对一种特定信号通路开发药物的治疗效果有限。开发针对多种信号通路的化疗药物已成为癌症治疗的新范例。脱氧地胆草素（DET）和异脱氧地胆草素（IDET）是“”的倍半萜内酯成分，长期以来一直被用作民间药物来治疗肝病、糖尿病、利尿、支气管炎、发烧、腹泻、痢疾、癌症和炎症。最近，DET和IDET的抗癌活性得到了广泛研究。在此，我们的目的是综述DET和IDET的现状，并讨论它们的抗癌活性，特别强调这些化合物触发凋亡途径所使用的分子靶点和机制，这可能有助于进一步设计和开展研究，将它们开发成为癌症治疗的先导治疗药物。文献表明，DET和IDET通过癌细胞中失调的多种信号通路诱导凋亡，并表明通过同时靶向多种通路，这些化合物可以选择性地杀死癌细胞。本综述表明，DET和IDET具有有前景的抗癌活性，但需要更多的研究和临床试验来验证和了解它们的治疗效果，以便将它们开发成为治疗癌症的有效疗法。
