The therapeutic potential of natural products for treating pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most malignant tumors of the digestive tract, with the poor prognosis and low 5-year survival rate less than 10%. Although surgical resection and chemotherapy as gemcitabine (first-line treatment) has been applied to the pancreatic cancer patients, the overall survival rates of pancreatic cancer are quite low due to drug resistance. Therefore, it is of urgent need to develop alternative strategies for its treatment. In this review, we summarized the major herbal drugs and metabolites, including curcumin, triptolide, Panax Notoginseng Saponins and their metabolites etc. These compounds with antioxidant, anti-angiogenic and anti-metastatic activities can inhibit the progression and metastasis of pancreatic cancer. Expecting to provide comprehensive information of potential natural products, our review provides valuable information and strategies for pancreatic cancer treatment.

A potential therapeutic approach for ulcerative colitis: targeted regulation of macrophage polarization through phytochemicals

“…Surgical treatment is usually indicated for uncontrollable massive bleeding, perforation, or endoscopically unresectable UC-associated adverse lesions ( 58 ). Phytochemicals, which are extracted from nature and with widely available sources, have been confirmed to possess abundant biological activities, as well as relatively low toxicity and high efficacy, which are particularly prominent in antitumor applications ( 59 – 61 ). The utilization of natural products in the management and prevention of various ailments can be traced back to ancient times, owing to their remarkable and indisputable effectiveness.…”

“…Toosendanin (TSN) is a triterpenoid distributed in the bark or fruits of a type of commonly used Chinese herbal medicine, known as Melia toosendan Sieb et Zucc ( 59 ). Fan et al.…”

Metabolomics-based discovery of XHP as a CYP3A4 inhibitor against pancreatic cancer

“…Worldwide, PC ranks first among cancer-related diseases and fourth and sixth in China ( Rahib et al, 2021 ). Despite treatments and delivery methods such as chemotherapy, the survival rate of patients with PC is relatively low, with <10% of patients surviving for 5 years or more ( He et al, 2022 ). Moreover, increasing the quality of life of patients with PC remains challenging.…”

Interactions between curcumin and human salt-induced kinase 3 elucidated from computational tools and experimental methods

“…The mechanism for the antitumor activity of natural compound curcumin were related with multiple signaling pathways, such as the signal transducer, nuclear factor-κB, cyclooxygenase 2, mitogenactivated protein kinase, and activator of transcription 3, and TNF-α signaling pathways. Curcumin is a spectrum inhibitor that targets epidermal growth factor receptor (Gopal, 2022), protein kinase C (Hasmeda and Polya, 1996), tubulin (Chakraborti et al, 2011;Ota et al, 2018), cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (Sumirtanurdin et al, 2020), casein kinase 2 (Cozza et al, 2020), adenosine monophosphateactivated protein kinases (Soltani et al, 2019), and Abelson leukemia virus tyrosine kinase 1 (Rodrigues et al, 2021). A previous study reported that curcumin exhibits antitumor activity in triple-negative breast cancer patient-derived xenograft tumor mice by inhibiting the expression of salt-inducible kinase 3 (SIK3) (Cheng et al, 2021).…”

“…Natural products have many notable characteristics, such as wide efficacy and low toxicity; they have recently attracted increasing research attention as lead compounds to treat mitochondrial dysfunction-related diseases, cancer, and antimicrobial-resistant infections ( Du et al, 2021 ; An et al, 2022 ; Rahman M. A. et al, 2022 ; Bernal et al, 2022 ; Rahman M. M. et al, 2022 ; He et al, 2022 ; Liao et al, 2022 ; Nurumal et al, 2022 ; Su et al, 2022 ; Xu et al, 2022 ). Especially, the effects of many natural product on mitochondrial dysfunction-related diseases have been recently studied ( An et al, 2022 ; Rahman M. A. et al, 2022 ; Rahman M. M. et al, 2022 ).…”