RESUMO
Cancer is a global burden. In low- and middle-income countries around 70% of deaths are due to cancer. For a number of years natural products have been a good source of agents for combatting cancer and plants have played a huge role in anti-cancer product development. For many centuries, indigenous cultures around the world have used traditional herbal medicine to treat a myriad of diseases including cancer. In Sri Lanka, a number of plants have been reported to have anti-cancer properties and some of the commonly used plants are described in this review with an account of their compounds and modes of action. Only a small number of the plants in Sri Lanka have been tested for their bioactivity and more research is required to determine their medicinal activity with the aim of developing novel drugs to fight this disease.
RESUMO
In the pharmaceutical industry, the expected surge in production of new therapeutic entities promised by technological advances, such as high-throughput screening, synthetic libraries and advances in molecular biology and genomics, has not materialized. The unique structural diversity of natural products continues to provide opportunities to discover novel compounds. Secondary metabolites, active components of natural products such as marine organisms, microbial organisms and terrestrial plants, are particularly exciting untapped resources for exploration as medicines. Sri Lanka is home to around 3700 plant species, half of which are considered as medicinal plants. Seventy per cent of the Sri Lankan population relies on this plant-based traditional medicine system for treating various illnesses such as tumors. As such these medicinal plant sources should be used to conquer terminal diseases and for prevention of diseases. Sri Lankan researchers have found several plant species that possess cytotoxic activity. This review summarizes the current information regarding the Sri Lankan plant materials that possess anticancer properties.