As the second leading cause of death in the world, the total number caused by cancer in 2008 is 1.4 million. The great cancer incidence worldwide increases the search for new, safer and efficient anticancer agents (especially to find the new structures and more active anticancer drugs from the natural products) aiming the prevention or the cure of such illness. For a century, matrine (an alkaloid isolated from sophorae flavescens Ait.) has been widely studied in the field of cancer. This review briefly describes the progress of matrine, its derivatives and their anticancer activity.

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