Natural product (NP) has a long history in promoting modern drug discovery, which has derived or inspired a large number of currently prescribed drugs. Recently, the NPs have emerged as the ideal candidates to combine with other therapeutic strategies to deal with the persistent challenge of conventional therapy, and the molecular regulation mechanism underlying these combinations is crucial for the related communities. Thus, it is urgently demanded to comprehensively provide the disease-specific molecular regulation data for various NP-based drug combinations. However, no database has been developed yet to describe such valuable information. In this study, a newly developed database entitled ‘Natural Product-based Drug Combination and Its Disease-specific Molecular Regulation (NPCDR)’ was thus introduced. This database was unique in (a) providing the comprehensive information of NP-based drug combinations & describing their clinically or experimentally validated therapeutic effect, (b) giving the disease-specific molecular regulation data for a number of NP-based drug combinations, (c) fully referencing all NPs, drugs, regulated molecules/pathways by cross-linking them to the available databases describing their biological or pharmaceutical characteristics. Therefore, NPCDR is expected to have great implications for the future practice of network pharmacology, medical biochemistry, drug design, and medicinal chemistry. This database is now freely accessible without any login requirement at both official (https://idrblab.org/npcdr/) and mirror (http://npcdr.idrblab.net/) sites.
Cancer progression and metastases are the leading causes of poor outcomes in patients with colon cancer. Colon cancer metastasis is a multigene, multistep, multistage complex process in which target genes, microRNAs, epithelial-stromal transformation, tumour stem cells, the tumour microenvironment, and various cell signalling pathways are implicated in the progression and metastasis of colon cancer. Although conventional therapies have made significant advances in treating the progression and metastasis of colorectal cancer, they have failed to improve survival outcomes. Natural compounds may have more significant potential in preventing and treating colon cancer. Active natural compounds exert their antitumor effects by inducing tumour cell differentiation, promoting tumour cell apoptosis, inhibiting tumour vascular growth, and regulating immunity. Natural compounds, combined with conventional therapies, can target mutant genes and various cellular signalling pathways, inhibit epithelial-stromal transformation, and improve the tumour microenvironment to inhibit tumour progression and metastasis. The synergism of natural compounds and conventional therapeutics has the potential to become a promising therapy for treating colorectal cancer progression and metastases.
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