文档介绍：Chapter 10
Natural Products in Cancer Chemoprevention
and Chemotherapy
. Ramawat and Shaily Goyal
Abstract Medicinal plants are an important source of diverse pounds
that have been used for the past several centuries in the treatment of cancer. About
25% of drugs in the modern pharmacopoeia are derived from plants, including sev-
eral anticancer drugs currently in clinical use such as vincristine, vinblastine, pacli-
taxel, podophyllotoxin, camptothecin bretastatin. These natural products,
their derivatives and analogues based on these drugs constitute an arsenal against
various types of neoplasms. The traditional use of plants provides a lead for cancer
chemopreventive molecules. The development of new derivatives from bioactive
compounds of food origin has been a viable way to reduce toxicity and increase
their effectiveness against cancer. bined efforts of botanists, pharmacolo-
gists, chemists and biologists are required to discover new effective drugs to fight
cancer. An evaluation of the mode of action of these bioactive molecules will be
helpful in designing novel drugs targeting mitosis. This article discusses natural
products currently in clinical use, and under clinical trials, for cancer chemotherapy
and chemoprevention.
Keywords Betulinic acid · Chemoprevention · Genistein · Podophyllotoxin ·
Resveratrol · Taxol · Vincristine
Introduction
About % of the 422,000 plant species of higher plants are known as medici-
nal plants and constitute a principal source of bioactive molecules. pared
to this, a very low proportion ( to 5%) of anisms has been explored
for the production of secondary metabolites. These figures may increase as many
plants, and most anisms, have not yet been screened for their biological
properties [1]. The proportion of medicinal plants to the total documented species
B
. Ramawat ( )
Laboratory of Biomolecular Technology, Department of Botany,
M. L. Sukhadia University, Udaipur-313001, India