Advance in main functional ingredients and mechanism of anticancer plant essential oils / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Cancer is a serious threat to human health with a high fatality rate. Modern anticancer methods, including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, commonly have more serious side effects. Anticancer plant essential oils which now attach great importance to cancer treatment, have many advantages such as multi-target, multi-effect, low adverse reaction, improving the body immunity, not easy to produce drug resistance, etc. The main active ingredients and the anticancer mechanism of essential oils were reviewed in this paper. Nineteen kinds of plant essential oils, including Cymbopogon flexuosus, Salvia officinalis, Lycopus lucidus, Lavandula angustifolia, Smyrnium olusatrum, peel of Citrus reticulate, leaves of Myrica rubra, and so on, displayed their prominent anti-cancer activities. Specifically, limonene, β-elemene, menthol, patchouli alcohol, thymol, eugenol, citral, β-caryophyllene, and their oxide may be the main anticancer composition of plant essential oils.