Borneol as Adjuvant Chemotherapy: A New Way for the Development of Novel Chemotherapeutic

Abstract

Nature has generously open life-saving remedies to mankind by offering evolutionarily optimized drug like bimolecular in the form of several natural products. These marvelous gifts of nature have been serving as most suitable candidates against the treatment of multiple disorders and particularly for cancer (2nd leading cause of death, cancer) due to their pleiotropic mode of action on target molecules. Current review intends to provide an update on the bioactivities of such gifts from nature, natural borneol, which is the major bioactive constituents of traditionally used medicines. Borneol is a monoterpenoid, isolated from different medicinal plants and have strong potential to be used against multiple disorders such as bacterial and inflammatory infections. Recently it is investigated that borneol has a great potential of inhibiting the growth of multiple neoplasms such as hepatocellular carcinoma, neuroblastoma, glioma, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, ovarian and lung cancer. Moreover, by regulating the BBB junctions it also increases the drug concentration in cancer cells, this shows that its combine use with already practiced therapeutics may increase the efficacy of these therapeutics against cancer cells. In this review we will summarize all the studies on anticancer activity of borneol, our primary goal will be to discuss the combined use of borneol with other clinically used drugs to improve their efficacy against human cancers.