School of Health, Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ESS-P. Porto), 4200-072 Porto, Portugal.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmaceutical Chemistry Section, CIETUS, IBSAL, Pharmacy Faculty, University of Salamanca (USAL), 37007 Salamanca, Spain.
Molecules. 2022 Aug 5;27(15):4989. doi: 10.3390/molecules27154989.
In African countries, cancer not only is a growing problem, but also a challenge because available funding and resources are limited. Therefore, African medicinal plants play a significant role in folk medicine and some of them are traditionally used for the treatment of cancer. The high mortality rate and adverse effects associated with cancer treatments have encouraged the search for novel plant-based drugs, thus, some African plants have been studied in recent years as a source of molecules with proven cytotoxicity. This review aims to discuss the cytotoxic activity, in vitro, of African plant crude extracts against cancer cell lines. For the period covered by this review (2017−2021) twenty-three articles were found and analyzed, which included a total of 105 plants, where the main cell lines used were those of breast cancer (MCF-7 and MDA-MBA-231) and colorectal cancer (HCT-116 and Caco-2), which are among the most prevalent cancers in Africa. In these studies, the plant crude extracts were obtained using different solvents, such as ethanol, methanol, or water, with variable results and IC50 values ranging from <20 µg/mL to >200 µg/mL. Water is the preferred solvent for most healers in African countries, however, in some studies, the aqueous extracts were the least potent. Apoptosis and the induction of cell cycle arrest may explain the cytotoxic activity seen in many of the plant extracts studied. Considering that the criteria of cytotoxicity activity for the crude extracts, as established by the American National Cancer Institute (NCI), is an IC50 < 30 μg/mL, we conclude that many extracts from the African flora could be a promising source of cytotoxic agents.
在非洲国家，癌症不仅是一个日益严重的问题，而且由于可用资金和资源有限，也是一个挑战。因此，非洲药用植物在民间医学中发挥着重要作用，其中一些传统上用于治疗癌症。癌症治疗相关的高死亡率和不良反应促使人们寻找新型植物来源的药物，因此，近年来一些非洲植物已被研究作为具有已证明细胞毒性的分子的来源。本文旨在讨论非洲植物粗提物在体外对癌细胞系的细胞毒性活性。在本综述涵盖的时期（2017-2021 年），共发现并分析了 23 篇文章，其中共涉及 105 种植物，主要使用的细胞系是乳腺癌（MCF-7 和 MDA-MBA-231）和结直肠癌（HCT-116 和 Caco-2），这些癌症在非洲最为普遍。在这些研究中，植物粗提物使用不同的溶剂（如乙醇、甲醇或水）获得，结果和 IC50 值各不相同，范围从<20µg/mL 到>200µg/mL。水是大多数非洲国家治疗师首选的溶剂，但在一些研究中，水提物的效果最差。细胞凋亡和细胞周期阻滞的诱导可能解释了许多研究中观察到的植物提取物的细胞毒性活性。考虑到美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）确定的粗提取物细胞毒性活性标准为 IC50<30μg/mL，我们得出结论，非洲植物群的许多提取物可能是有前途的细胞毒性药物来源。
