Role of Phytoconstituents in Cancer Treatment: A Review.

Over the years, natural compounds have become a significant advancement in cancer treatment, primarily due to their effectiveness, safety, bio-functionality, and wide range of molecular structures. They are now increasingly preferred in drug discovery due to these attributes. These compounds, whether occurring naturally or with synthetic modifications, find applications in various fields like biology, medicine, and engineering. While chemotherapy has been a successful method for treating cancer, it comes with systemic toxicity. To address this issue, researchers and medical practitioners are exploring the concept of combinational chemotherapy. This approach aims to reduce toxicity by using a mix of natural substances and their derivatives in clinical trials and prescription medications. Among the most extensively studied natural anticancer compounds are quercetin, curcumin, vincristine, and vinblastine. These compounds play crucial roles as immunotherapeutics and chemosensitizers, both as standalone treatments and in combination therapies with specific mechanisms. This review article provides a concise overview of the functions, potentials, and combinations of natural anticancer compounds in cancer treatment, along with their mechanisms of action and clinical applications.

Advanced Computational Methodologies Used in the Discovery of New Natural Anticancer Compounds.

Natural chemical compounds have been widely investigated for their programmed necrosis causing characteristics. One of the conventional methods for screening such compounds is the use of concentrated plant extracts without isolation of active moieties for understanding pharmacological activity. For the last two decades, modern medicine has relied mainly on the isolation and purification of one or two complicated active and isomeric compounds. The idea of multi-target drugs has advanced rapidly and impressively from an innovative model when first proposed in the early 2000s to one of the popular trends for drug development in 2021. Alternatively, fragment-based drug discovery is also explored in identifying target-based drug discovery for potent natural anticancer agents which is based on well-defined fragments opposite to use of naturally occurring mixtures. This review summarizes the current key advancements in natural anticancer compounds; computer-assisted/fragment-based structural elucidation and a multi-target approach for the exploration of natural compounds.

Plant Polyphenolic Compounds Potentiates Therapeutic Efficiency of Anticancer Chemotherapeutic Drugs: A Review.

BACKGROUND: Scientific research continues to develop more efficacious drugs to treat and cure cancer, the dreadful disease threatening the human race. Chemotherapy is an essential means in cancer therapy, however, plant drugs having pharmacological safety, can be used alone or as additions to current chemotherapeutic agents to enhance therapeutic efficacy and minimize chemotherapyinduced adverse effects. OBJECTIVE: A combination therapy where the synergistic effect on multiple targets is possible has gained significance because a one-drug one-target approach fails to yield the desired therapeutic effect. Therefore, a detailed description of important plant polyphenolic compounds with anticancer activity and their role in potentiating chemotherapeutic efficiency of existing anticancer drugs is provided in this review. Systematically screening combinations of active pharmaceutical ingredients for potential synergy with plant compounds may be especially valuable in cancer therapy. METHODS: We extensively have gone through reviews and research articles available in the literature. We made use of databases such as Google Scholar, Research Gate, PubMed, Science Direct, etc. The following keywords were used in our literature search: "Chemotherapy, drug development, cancer drugs, plant-derived polyphenolics, synergistic studies, combination therapy, diagnosis and genetics." CONCLUSION: Systematic research studies on screening combinations of plant phytochemicals with potential chemotherapeutic pharmaceuticals shed light on their synergistic effects, mechanisms of actions paving the way to develop more efficient anticancer therapeutics to treat and cure the cancer menace, to nullify chemotherapy-induced adverse effects and our review substantially contributes in this direction.