VARIOUS MEDICINAL PLANTS USED IN THE TREATMENT OF ANTICANCER ACTIVITY

VARIOUS MEDICINAL PLANTS USED IN THE TREATMENT OF ANTICANCER ACTIVITY

Dilip Kumar Chanchal ^*1, Shashi Alok ¹, Surabhi Rashi ², Rohit Kumar Bijauliya ¹, Rahul Deo Yadav ³ and Monika Sabharwal ⁴

Department of Pharmacognosy ¹, Department of Pharmaceutics ²,Institute of Pharmacy, Bundelkhand University, Jhansi - 284128, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Department of Pharmacy ³, Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad - 211001, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research ⁴, Panchkula - 134112, Haryana, India.

ABSTRACT: Cancer is a major public health burden in both developed and developing countries. It is actually a group of many related diseases that all have to do with cells. It is one of the major causes of death worldwide where the number of cancer patients is in continuous rise. It is a major public problem whose estimated worldwide new incidence is about 6 million cases per year. It is the second major cause of deaths after cardio­vascular diseases. There is a constant demand for new therapies to treat and prevent this life-threatening disease. The plant kingdom produces naturally occurring secondary metabolites which are being investigated for their anticancer activities leading to the development of new clinical drugs. Worldwide effects are ongoing to identify new anticancer compounds from plants. In recent years owing to the fear of side effects people prefer more and more use of natural plant products for cancer. For these reasons, World Health Organization (WHO) supports the use of traditional medicines which are efficacious and non toxic. This review has tried to summarize few plants of India and out of India having anticancer activity.

Cancer, Medicinal plants, Description, Indian and foreign plants

INTRODUCTION: Our body is composed of many millions of tiny cells, each a self-contained living unit. Normal cells in the body grow and divide for a period of time and then stop growing and dividing. Thereafter, they only reproduce themselves as necessary to replace defective or dying cells. Cancer occurs when this cellular reproduction process goes out of control. The abnormal growth and division observed in cancer cells is caused by damage in these cells DNA (genetic material inside cells that determines cellular characteristics and functioning).

There are a variety of ways that cellular DNA can become damaged and defective. For example, environmental factors (such as exposure to tobacco smoke) can initiate a chain of events that results in cellular DNA defects that lead to cancer.

Alternatively, defective DNA can be inherited from your parents. As cancer cells divide and replicate themselves, they often form into a clump of cancer cells known as a tumour. Tumour causes many of the symptoms of cancer by pressuring, crushing and destroying surrounding non-cancerous cells and tissues ¹.  Treatment options, which depend on the stage and type of cancer, include: Surgery, Radiation therapy, Chemotherapy, Biological therapy, Hormone therapy etc. Despite substantial improvements in the current treatments that are available for patients diagnosed with cancer and the positive influence of these treatments on survival, chemotherapy or radiation therapy cause an array of traumatic side effects, chemotherapy can sometimes cause unpleasant side effect like such as fatigue, sleep disturbance, appetite loss, hair loss, sore mouth, changes in taste, fever and infection, anxiety, depression, nausea, and vomiting. These side effects are often difficult to ameliorate or manage, and can significantly impair a cancer patient’s quality of life (QOL). There are also chanc­es of other harmful effects of these treatment viz. second cancers after chemotherapy, hormonal and reproductive problems, effects on the im­munologic system, heart disease, effects on kidney and urinary bladder, effects on gastrointestinal organs, neurologic and psychological changes etc. ^{2, 3}.

In recent years there has been a gradual revival of interest in the use of medicinal plants in the developing countries because herbal medicine have been reported safe and less or without any adverse effect especially when compared with synthetic drugs. Herbal medicines represent one of the most important fields of traditional medicines all over the world, to promote the use of herbal medicine and to determine their potential as a source of new drugs. It is essential to study medicinal plants which have folklore reputation in a more intensified way. Human beings have used the plants for medicinal purposes for centuries of the world including countries in the Indian sub-continent like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh ⁴.

The effort to find anticancer agents from higher plants was launched by the US National Cancer institute (NCI) in 1957. Today many of the most useful and curative anticancer drugs are derived from natural products. Since the initiation of program by NCI more than 35,000 plant species had investigated and resulted in the discovery of anticancer drugs such as Vincristine, Vinblastine, Taxol, Indicine - N - oxide, Etoposide analogs, Camptothecin and analogs etc.

India is the largest producer of medicinal plants and is rightly called the "Botanical garden of the World". The medicinal plants, besides having natural therapeutic values against various diseases, also provide high quality of food and raw materials for livelihood. Considerable works have been done on these plants to treat cancer, and some plant products have been marketed as anticancer drugs, based on the traditional uses and scientific reports. Medicinal plants have been stated ⁵ to comprise about 8000 species and account for approximately 50% of all the higher flowering plant species of India.

In other words, there are about 400 families of the flowering plants; at least 315 are represented by India. Medicinal properties of few such plants have been reported but a good number of plants still used by local folklore are yet to be explored. The Western use of such information has also come under increasing scrutiny and the national and indigenous rights on these resources have become acknowledged by most academic and industrial researchers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about three quarters of the world's population currently use herbs and other forms of traditional medicines to treat diseases. There are at least 250,000 species of plants out of which more than one thousand plants have been found to possess significant anticancer properties ⁶.

Advantages of Herbal Drugs over Allopathic Drugs: Medicinal plants still play a central role in the healthcare system of large proportions of the world’s population. Recognition and development of the medicinal and economic benefits of plants are on the increase in both developing and industrialized nations. An herb (also called a botanical) is a plant or plant part used for its scent, flavor, and / or therapeutic properties. Products made from botanicals that are used to maintain or improve health have been called herbal supplements, botanicals, or phytomedicines. The pharmacological treatment of disease began long ago with the use of herbal medicines are “crude drugs of vegetable origin utilized for the treatment of disease states, often of a chronic nature, or to attain or maintain a condition of improved health”.

It has been estimated that these medicines derived from plants constitute about 25 percent in modern pharmacopoeia. Traditional herbal medicines are naturally occurring plant-derived substances with minimal or no industrial processing that have been used to treat illness within local or regional healing practices. Common reasons for use of herbal drugs include health promotion, disease prevention, poor outcomes and limited treatment options for a serious illness, exhaustion of conventional therapies, dissatisfaction with, or lack of efficacy of conventional therapies, significant side effects or risks associated with conventional medicine, belief that herbal and natural products are better or safer, preference for personal involvement in the decision making process, and cultural or spiritual preference. Whereas side effects of allopathic medications vary wildly from mild to severe and there are many. They include insomnia, vomiting, fatigue, dry mouth, diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, suicidal thoughts, hostility, depression, mania, seizures, coma, anemia, hair loss, high blood sugar, shoplifting, swelling, impotency, panic attacks, confusion, fainting and death. It is often difficult for seniors to keep track of multiple medications which further increase likelihood of side effects due to allopathic medicines ⁷.

Few types of plants species present are listed and detailed (active constituents, common names, part used, special character [if any]) below.

TABLE 1: PLANTS USED IN CANCER TREATMENT ^{8- 34}

CONCLUSION: Cancer is an abnormal malignant growth of body tissue or cell. A cancerous growth is called a malignant tumour or malignancy. A noncancerous growth is called benign tumour. The process of cancer metastasis is consisting of series of sequential interrelated steps, each of which is rate limiting. There are many traditional systems of medicine in the world, each with different associated philosophies and cultural origins.

Some of these, such as Tibetan traditional medicine, remain relatively localised in their country of origin; while others such as Ayurvedic and Chinese traditional medicines are increasingly used in many different areas of the world. Plants are loaded with chemical with chemo protective activities of some of them are undergoing clinical trial. Inhibition of angiogenesis is a novel process of cancer therapy. The selected and careful use of this plant may definitely in antiangiogenic therapy and thus in cancer management. Plant derived anticancer agents are effective inhibitors of cancer cells lines, making them in high demand. Exploitation of these agents needs to be managed to keep up with demands and be sustainable. A list has been tried to be created which can give idea of a huge variety of species of plants of the world which are commonly used or are under investigation for the effectiveness as anticancer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The authors thank Dr. Shashi Alok and Mrs. Monika Sabharwal for his valuable suggestion during the work.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

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    How to cite this article:

    Chanchal DK, Alok S, Rashi S, Bijauliya RK, Yadav RD and Sabharwal M: Various medicinal plants used in the treatment of anticancer activity. Int J Pharm Sci Res 2018; 9(4): 1424-29. doi: 10.13040/IJPSR.0975-8232.9(4).1424-29.

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