The Family Asteraceae: A review of phytochemical contents and anticancer activity of selected members

Abstract

Background: The Asteraceae is one of the largest families among the angiosperms, consisting of over 1,620 genera and 23,600 species of herbs, shrubs, and trees which are found in the world. They are unique due to the possession of composite inflorescence heads and single-seed achene fruits. Members exert various levels of pharmacological activities such as anticancer, anti-inflammation, antimicrobial, antimalaria and antidiabetic due to the presence of phytoconstituents contained in their leaves, stembarks, flowers, and roots. Some of the members have shown potent cytotoxic effects on various cancers like breast, cervical, ovarian and blood cancers. Main body: Due to the side effects caused by chemotherapeutic drugs on cancer patients, there is a paradigm shift towards natural remedies for cancer by researchers. Studies carried out on different species belonging to the Asteraceae showed that they possessed potential cytotoxic and therapeutic effects on cancer cells like MCF-7 breast cancer cells, liver, leukaemia, ovarian and cervical cancer. The anticancer potentials of the Asteraceae were reported to have been due to the presence of phytoconstituents isolated from the various parts of some selected members. These metabolites or phytoconstituents include flavonoids, sesquiterpenes, alkaloids, and various types of glycosides. These compounds were found to inhibit angiogenesis, prevent metastasis and induce cellular apoptosis in cancer cells. Various techniques have been deployed to characterize and elucidate the chemical structures of isolated compounds from some members. These techniques are UV-vis, FTIR, GC-MS, LC-MS and NMR. This present review revealed the presence of potential anticancer compounds and the need to screen more members of the family for their anticancer activities against various cancer cells. In this case, various search engines such as Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed, BASE, ResearchGate, DOAJ, Science.gov, Semantic Scholar and CORE were used in this study. Conclusion: This review showed that despite the numerous beneficial anticancer therapeutic potentials of the Asteraceae, only a few members of the family were screened for their anticancer activity. There is a need, therefore, for more studies on many members towards the isolation of potential anticancer compounds. This will help in the discovery of novel compounds that will serve as lead compounds for anticancer drug development.