Jehan Shah, Huang Jiaxin, Farooq Umar, Basheer Irum, Zhou Wenhu
Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Tongzipo Road 172, Changsha, Hunan 410013, China; Key Laboratory of Saline-alkali Vegetation Ecology Restoration, Ministry of Education, College of Life Science, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China.
Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Tongzipo Road 172, Changsha, Hunan 410013, China.
Phytomedicine. 2022 Apr;98:153936. doi: 10.1016/j.phymed.2022.153936. Epub 2022 Jan 17.
Most chemotherapeutics used in cancer therapies exhibit considerable side effects to the patients. Thus, developing new chemo agents to treat cancer patients with minimal toxic and side effects is urgently needed. Recently, the combination of different chemotherapeutics has become a promising strategy to treat malignancies. Thymoquinone (TQ) is a primary bioactive compound derived from the folk medicinal plant Nigella sativa, which has been found an antitumor, chemopreventive and chemopotentiating agent against human neoplastic diseases.
We briefly summarize the current research of the biomolecular mechanisms of TQ and evaluate the existing literature on TQ adjuvant therapies against various cancers.
The data in this review were gathered by several search engines including, Google Scholar, PubMed and ScienceDirect. We highlighted and classified the outcomes of both in vitro and in vivo experiments of TQ adjuvant therapies against human cancers and their chemopreventive activities on vital organs.
Several studies have shown that TQ synergistically potentiated the antitumor activity of numerous chemo agents against human neoplastic disease, including lung, breast, liver, colorectal, skin, prostate, stomach, bone and blood cancers. TQ also acted as a chemopreventive agent and reduced the toxicity of many chemo agents to vital organs, such as the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs.
In summary, we highly recommend an advanced evaluation of TQ adjuvant therapies at the level of preclinical and clinical trials, which could lead to a novel combinatorial therapy for cancer treatment with low or tolerable adverse effects on patients.
癌症治疗中使用的大多数化疗药物对患者都有相当大的副作用。因此，迫切需要开发新的化疗药物，以最小的毒副作用治疗癌症患者。最近，不同化疗药物的联合使用已成为治疗恶性肿瘤的一种有前景的策略。百里醌（TQ）是从民间药用植物黑种草中提取的主要生物活性化合物，已被发现是一种针对人类肿瘤疾病的抗肿瘤、化学预防和化学增敏剂。
我们简要总结了目前关于TQ生物分子机制的研究，并评估了现有关于TQ辅助治疗各种癌症的文献。
本综述中的数据是通过包括谷歌学术、PubMed和ScienceDirect在内的多个搜索引擎收集的。我们突出并分类了TQ辅助治疗人类癌症的体外和体内实验结果及其对重要器官的化学预防活性。
多项研究表明，TQ能协同增强多种化疗药物对人类肿瘤疾病的抗肿瘤活性，包括肺癌、乳腺癌、肝癌、结直肠癌、皮肤癌、前列腺癌、胃癌、骨癌和血癌。TQ还作为一种化学预防剂，降低了许多化疗药物对心脏、肝脏、肾脏和肺等重要器官的毒性。
总之，我们强烈建议在临床前和临床试验水平上对TQ辅助治疗进行进一步评估，这可能会带来一种对患者副作用低或可耐受的新型癌症联合治疗方法。
