Abstract
Cancer is a challenging problem for the global health community, and its increasing burden necessitates seeking novel and alternative therapies. Most cancers share six basic characteristics known as “cancer hallmarks”, including uncontrolled proliferation, refractoriness to proliferation blockers, escaping apoptosis, unlimited proliferation, enhanced angiogenesis, and metastatic spread. Apoptosis, as one of the best-known programmed cell death processes, is generally promoted through two signaling pathways, including the intrinsic and extrinsic cascades. These pathways comprise several components that their alterations can render an apoptosis-resistance phenotype to the cell. Therefore, targeting more than one molecule in apoptotic pathways can be a novel and efficient approach for both identifying new anticancer therapeutics and preventing resistance to therapy. The main purpose of this review is to summarize data showing that various plant extracts and plant-derived molecules can activate both intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis pathways in human cancer cells, making them attractive candidates in cancer treatment.
Highlights
Cancer is a global health issue that brings many medical challenges for patients
The intracellular parts of the death receptors have a conserved protein–protein interaction domain known as the death domain that is binding sites for adaptor proteins, such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor-associated death domain (TRADD) and Fas-associated death domain (FADD), as well as initiator caspases like caspase 8 and 10 [21,22,23]
Using n-hexane fractionation prepared from ethanolic extract of the roots of Inula racemosa, Pal and colleagues showed that treating a human leukemia cell line, HL-60, by this extract induced both pathways of apoptosis
Summary
Cancer is a global health issue that brings many medical challenges for patients. It was estimated in 2018 that 17 million new cases of cancer had been diagnosed and over half of these patients ended up dying. World Health Organization (WHO) defines cancer as the second leading cause of mortality, leading to one in six deaths worldwide These estimations rely on the recent advancements in biotechnology and diagnostic methods. Hanahan and Weinberg defined cancer as a genetic disease caused by DNA mutations leading to uncontrolled cell proliferation [3]. Their description of cancer relies on the somatic mutation theory and its cell-based gene variations. Apoptosis is a multistep process that involves two major pathways to trigger a cascade of events leading to the fragmentation of chromatin and nuclear membrane When this physiological process tended to be dysregulated, many pathological transformations happen to develop cancer [6]. This review article briefly describes various mechanisms of apoptosis and its deregulation during malignant transformations and summarizes the plant materials with the capacity to target both pathways of apoptosis in cancer cells
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