Abstract
Cancer still remains a leading cause of death despite improvements in diagnosis, drug discovery and therapy approach. Therefore, there is a strong need to improve methodologies as well as to increase the number of approaches available. Natural compounds of different origins (i.e., from fungi, plants, microbes, etc.) represent an interesting approach for fighting cancer. In particular, synergistic strategies may represent an intriguing approach, combining natural compounds with classic chemotherapeutic drugs to increase therapeutic efficacy and lower the required drug concentrations. In this review, we focus primarily on those natural compounds utilized in synergistic approached to treating cancer, with particular attention to those compounds that have gained the most research interest.
Highlights
These kinds of cancers are often described as “caused by the westernization of lifestyle”, the differing cancer profiles in several countries and regions show that marked geographic disparities still exist; there are local risk factors persisting in populations at quite different phases of social and economic transition
Even though the study was not guided by modern clinical standards, mainly because they lacked a placebo control group, their results revealed that ascorbate-treated patients showed improved quality of life of life and increased mean survival time [121,122]
The primary problem in cancer therapy is drug resistance; a huge number of cellular mechanisms are involved in this resistance [172] and no molecule is excluded from acquiring a resistant phenotype
Summary
In our century a leading cause of death and the single most significant obstacle to increasing life expectancy in every country in the world. The escalating rise of tumours as a cause of death is nearly equal to the noticeably declining mortality rates for coronary heart disease and stroke in many countries. It is interesting, today, to notice that changes in tumour incidence are most pronounced in emerging economies. There, history is repeating itself in the shift from poverty- and infection-related malignancies to those diseases that are already dominant in developed areas (e.g., in North America and Europe) These kinds of cancers are often described as “caused by the westernization of lifestyle”, the differing cancer profiles in several countries and regions show that marked geographic disparities still exist; there are local risk factors persisting in populations at quite different phases of social and economic transition. Even if substantial improvements have been achieved in early diagnosis and in new drug improvement, there is a strong need to develop new methodologies and new molecules that are able to advance the therapeutic approaches currently available [1]
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