Title:Targeting Autophagic Pathways by Plant Natural Compounds in Cancer Treatment
Volume: 21
Issue: 12
Author(s): Fatemeh Forouzanfar and Seyed Hadi Mousavi*
Affiliation:
- Medical Toxicology Research Center, School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad,Iran
Keywords:
Autophagic pathways, herbal medicine, cancer, curcumin, resveratrol, oridonin.
Abstract: Nowadays, natural compounds of plant origin with anticancer effects have gained more attention
because of their clinical safety and broad efficacy profiles. Autophagy is a multistep lysosomal
degradation pathway that may have a unique potential for clinical benefit in the setting of cancer
treatment. To retrieve articles related to the study, the databases of Google Scholar, Web of sciences,
Medline and Scopus, using the following keywords: Autophagic pathways; herbal medicine, oncogenic
autophagic pathways, tumor-suppressive autophagic pathways, and cancer were searched. Although
natural plant compounds such as resveratrol, curcumin, oridonin, gossypol, and paclitaxel have proven
anticancer potential via autophagic signaling pathways, there is still a great need to find new natural
compounds and investigate the underlying mechanisms, to facilitate their clinical use as potential anticancer
agents through autophagic induction.