Use of Natural Products and Their Derivative in Cancer Research for the Discovery of Safer Treatments

Abstract

Cancer stands as the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease worldwide. Many new techniques and procedures have been made in the treatment and control of cancer progression, but many deficiencies and challenges are still being faced. Chemotherapy is normally used for cancer treatment all over the world but it has many undesired side effects like fatigue, hair loss, frequent infection, and anemia. Cancer cells lose some regulatory functions resulting in continued division, which makes cancer cells susceptible to chemotherapeutic drugs. New biomedical tools for safer treatments for this disease are badly needed to improve cancer incidence in the human population. Systemic drug discovery launched a big collection of useful chemotherapeutic agents but toxicities like myotoxicity cardiotoxicity, renal toxicity, pulmonary toxicity, etc. are problematic issues. Natural therapies, derived from plants can decrease such side effects. With the help of animal models, many natural products are being explored and used to treat cancer all over the world. Animal models of cancer can mimic the disease in terms of morphology, biochemistry, and genetics could be helpful to identify the mechanism by which this disease develops in humans. Natural compounds have gained much attention as many compounds have shown very promising anti-cancer properties in vitro, but have yet to be evaluated in humans. In this review, we compile some natural anticancer drugs which are in clinical trials.