Abstract
Cancer is a common malignant disease worldwide with an increasing mortality in recent years. Salvia miltiorrhiza, a well-known traditional Chinese medicine, has been used for the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases for thousands of years. The liposoluble tanshinones in S. miltiorrhiza are important bioactive components and mainly include tanshinone IIA, dihydrodanshinone, tanshinone I, and cryptotanshinone. Previous studies showed that these four tanshinones exhibited distinct inhibitory effects on tumor cells through different molecular mechanisms in vitro and in vivo. The mechanisms mainly include the inhibition of tumor cell growth, metastasis, invasion, and angiogenesis, apoptosis induction, cell autophagy, and antitumor immunity, and so on. In this review, we describe the latest progress on the antitumor functions and mechanisms of these four tanshinones to provide a deeper understanding of the efficacy. In addition, the important role of tumor immunology is also reviewed.
Highlights
Tanshinone is a natural terpenoid and the main bioactive component isolated from traditional Chinese medicine Salvia miltiorrhiza
In gastric cancer AGS cell xenograft SCID mice model, results showed that treatment with Tan tanshinone IIA (IIA) for 8 weeks significantly reduced the protein expression levels of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), inverted gravity flame reactor (IGFR), PI3K, AKT, and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and inhibited AGS cell proliferation by blocking the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway (Su and Chiu, 2016)
In an in vivo mouse model, DT-I showed inhibited formation of osteosarcoma. These results suggested that DT-I inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion and induced apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells in vivo and in vitro by inhibiting Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway (Tan et al, 2019)
Summary
Tanshinone is a natural terpenoid and the main bioactive component isolated from traditional Chinese medicine Salvia miltiorrhiza. It is traditionally used in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in China (Chen et al, 2012; Shi et al, 2019; Sun et al, 2019). According to the chemical structure, tanshinones could be classified into different types, out of which tanshinone IIA (Tan IIA), dihydrotanshinone (DT), tanshinone I (Tan I), and cryptotanshinone (CT) generally considered most important (Hao et al, 2016a; Shi et al, 2016a). A series of downstream enzymes were involved to catalyze the various steps of biosynthesis, and GPP transformed into tanshinones (Gao et al, 2009; Guo et al, 2013)
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