Department of Zoology, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, India.
Department of Ilmul Advia (Unani Pharmacology), A.K. Tibbiya College, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.
Curr Drug Targets. 2019;20(12):1227-1243. doi: 10.2174/1389450120666190429120314.
Cancer is the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although chemotherapy and radiotherapy enhance the survival rate of cancerous patients but they have several acute toxic effects. Therefore, there is a need to search for new anticancer agents having better efficacy and lesser side effects. In this regard, herbal treatment is found to be a safe method for treating and preventing cancer. Here, an attempt has been made to screen some less explored medicinal plants like Ammania baccifera, Asclepias curassavica, Azadarichta indica, Butea monosperma, Croton tiglium, Hedera nepalensis, Jatropha curcas, Momordica charantia, Moringa oleifera, Psidium guajava, etc. having potent anticancer activity with minimum cytotoxic value (IC50 >3μM) and lesser or negligible toxicity. They are rich in active phytochemicals with a wide range of drug targets. In this study, these medicinal plants were evaluated for dose-dependent cytotoxicological studies via in vitro MTT assay and in vivo tumor models along with some more plants which are reported to have IC50 value in the range of 0.019-0.528 mg/ml. The findings indicate that these plants inhibit tumor growth by their antiproliferative, pro-apoptotic, anti-metastatic and anti-angiogenic molecular targets. They are widely used because of their easy availability, affordable price and having no or sometimes minimal side effects. This review provides a baseline for the discovery of anticancer drugs from medicinal plants having minimum cytotoxic value with minimal side effects and establishment of their analogues for the welfare of mankind.
癌症是全球发病率和死亡率的第二大主要原因。虽然化疗和放疗提高了癌症患者的生存率，但它们有几种急性毒性作用。因此，需要寻找具有更好疗效和更少副作用的新抗癌药物。在这方面，草药治疗被发现是治疗和预防癌症的一种安全方法。在这里，我们试图筛选一些探索较少的药用植物，如 Ammania baccifera、Asclepias curassavica、Azadarichta indica、Butea monosperma、Croton tiglium、Hedera nepalensis、Jatropha curcas、Momordica charantia、Moringa oleifera、Psidium guajava 等，它们具有潜在的抗癌活性，最小细胞毒性值（IC50 >3μM）和较小或可忽略的毒性。它们富含具有广泛药物靶点的活性植物化学物质。在这项研究中，通过体外 MTT 测定和体内肿瘤模型评估了这些药用植物的剂量依赖性细胞毒性研究，以及一些报道的 IC50 值在 0.019-0.528 mg/ml 范围内的其他植物。研究结果表明，这些植物通过抗增殖、促凋亡、抗转移和抗血管生成的分子靶点抑制肿瘤生长。它们因其易于获取、价格实惠且副作用最小或有时没有而被广泛使用。本综述为从具有最小细胞毒性值和最小副作用的药用植物中发现抗癌药物提供了基础，并为人类的福利建立了它们的类似物。
