Abstract
Traditional Chinese herbs are regarded as a new and promising source of potential anti-cancer remedies and new chemotherapy adjuvants to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy and/or to ameliorate its side effects. Extensive investigations have been undertaken both in the experimental and clinical studies over the years to augment the efficacy of chemotherapy. Evodia rutaecarpa is a very popular multi-purpose herb traditionally used in China for the treatment of headaches, abdominal pain, postpartum hemorrhage, dysentery and amenorrhea. The major constituents of Evodia rutaecarpa are evodiamine and rutaecarpine. Growing evidence demonstrates that evodiamine possesses anti-cancer activities both in vitro and in vivo by inhibiting proliferation, invasion and metastasis, inducing apoptosis of a variety of tumor cell lines. This review is aimed to summarize the recent researches on evodiamine focusing on anti-cancer activity and to highlight molecular mechanisms during the past ten years.
Highlights
Chinese herbs have been and still are widely used as important remedies in Oriental medicine
Further studies demonstrate that evodiamine has anti-tumor potential by inhibiting proliferation, inducing apoptosis and reducing invasion and metastasis of a wide variety of tumor cells, including breast cancer cells [14], prostate cancer cells [15,16,17], leukemic T-lymphocyte cells [18,19], melanoma cells [20], cervical cancer cells
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a key signaling protein involved in angiogenesis, and its overexpression is associated with the process of metastasis
Summary
Chinese herbs have been and still are widely used as important remedies in Oriental medicine. A variety of biologically active constituents have been isolated from these sources and confirmed to have anti-cancer activity in both experimental and epidemiologic studies. Evodiamine, a quinolone alkaloid, is the major component isolated from the fruit of Evodia rutaecarpa and has been shown to possess various biological effects, such as testosterone secretion [4], catecholamine secretion [5], antinociceptive [6], anti-inflammatory [7], anti-obesity [8], vasodilatory [9], thermoregulatory [10] and uterotonic effects [11]. The purpose of this review is to summarize the recent progress of research on the anti-tumor mechanisms of evodiamine, which suggests an exciting future for such pursuits in oncology
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