But cancers in the metastasis stage will resist against care. In cancer, initial tumors will be treated by chemical supplement therapies or surgery. Regarding the fast progress in the phytochemical study of herbal products, plants are transforming to popular anticancer sources. 11Ĭancer is a painful disease and fighting against this disease is very important for public health.
It is believed that anticancer effects of plants develop by suppressing cancer’s stimulating enzymes, repairing DNA, stimulating production of antitumor enzymes in cell, increasing body immunity, and inducing antioxidant effects. 10ĭifferent improvements are reported in common treatments of cancer by finding secondary compounds of natural products and medicinal herbs. Secondary metabolites have biologic effects such as anti-inflammatory, anticancer, contraceptive, and different effects on hematopoietic cells, 8 lipids, 9 and cardiovascular systems. Alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, pigments, and tannins are important constituents of these compounds. These compounds are called secondary metabolite. Plants produce a wide range of chemical compounds that apparently have no direct role in the plants’ growth. 6 Medicinal herbs are important for cancer treatment due to their multiple chemical compound for discovering new active materials against cancer. Therefore, availability of natural products with higher effectiveness and lower side effects is desired. In order to prepare anticancer medicines from natural resources like plants, testing cytotoxic compounds and screening raw extracts of plants is necessary. The most important problem in cancer treatment is destroying tumor cells in the presence of natural cells, without damaging natural cells. Nowadays, various methods are used for cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, but in this method, because of nonselectivity of medicines, a high percentage of healthy cells will be lost with cancer cells. 3 Mortality caused by cancers is increasing throughout the world, and it is predicted that more than 13.1 million deaths will occur due to cancer worldwide by 2030. Based on this statistics, 85 000 people suffer from cancer in Iran each year, and 55 000 people die from cancer. The prevalence rate of cancer in Iran is 7/134 per 100 000 people. According to the World Health Organization, 14 million people suffer from cancer and 8 million die by cancer worldwide. Every year, an average 182 per 100 000 persons suffer from cancer worldwide, and 102 die by cancer. 2Ĭancer is an important health problem in developing and developed countries. This abnormal cell reproduces in an abnormal way by asexual reproduction, that is, it ignores signals related to regulation of cell’s growth around it and obtains invasion characteristics and causes changes in surrounded tissues. 1 Cancer starts with the deformation of a natural cell caused by genetic mutations in DNA.
According to results of this study, herbal extracts have antioxidant compounds that can induce apoptosis and inhibit cell proliferation by the investigated mechanisms.Ĭancer is one of the major causes of death in the world, and it is the second leading cause of mortality after cardiovascular diseases. Common treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy can cause some complications. Enhancement P53 protein expression, reducing the expression of proteins P27, P21, NFκB expression and induction of apoptosis, inhibition of the PI3K/Akt pathway, and reduction of the level of acid phosphatase and lipid peroxidation are the most effective mechanisms of herbal plants that can inhibit cell cycle and proliferation. In this phase, 49 nonrelevant articles were excluded.
In order to gather information the keywords “traditional medicine,” “plant compounds,” “medicinal plant,” “medicinal herb,” “toxicity,” “anticancer effect,” “cell line,” and “treatment” were searched in international databases such as ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Scopus and national databases such as Magiran, Sid, and Iranmedex, and a total of 228 articles were collected. The aim of this study was to investigate the effective medicinal plants in the treatment of cancer and study their mechanism of action. With due attention to rapid progress in the phytochemical study of plants, they are becoming popular because of their anticancer effects.
Cancer is the second cause of death after cardiovascular diseases.