Anti-lung Cancer Mechanism of Natural Quinonoids / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

Lung cancer is a common malignancy with a high morbidity and high mortality. Although chemoradiotherapy is still the main therapy, the side effects caused by radiotherapy and chemotherapy cannot be ignored. There is an urgent need to find a targeted anti-cancer compound with a low toxicity and strong effect. Therefore, a large number of natural product-derived compounds have received increasing attention for their anti-cancer effect. They are diverse in structure, rich in variety but simpler in composition than natural plants, with a clear efficacy. This facilitates research, and the enriched ingredients have stronger pharmacological effect and clinical efficacy than natural plants. Quinonoids are natural bioactive molecules that widely exist in more than 100 species of higher and lower plants, including naphthoquinones, phenanthrenequinones, benzoquinones and pyrenes. Most of them have anti-tumor effect. They are applied and studied in many cancers, especially lung cancer; and the mechanism of action involves multiple pathways, which play a role in promoting apoptosis, inhibiting proliferation, inducing autophagy, inhibiting angiogenesis and cell invasion and migration. When they are used in combination with other drugs, there is also an anti-tumor effect. With the development of researches, many synthetic quinonoid derivatives with similar structures also increase the diversity of anti-cancer steroids, and quinonoids have broad application prospects in lung cancer. On the basis of a large amount of literature, this article reviews current studies on the molecular mechanisms of antitumor activity of quinonoids, summarizes the common research targets with different effect, and analyzes the relationship between the pharmacological effects and anti-lung cancer effects of quinonoids, and proposes the direction of further research, so as to provide the reference for the follow-up research and development of other quinonoids.