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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Chemical-Biology of Natural Products from Medicinal Plants for Cancer Therapy

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Secondary metabolites are produced by an organism for defense towards competitors, herbivores, and pathogens. They also act as signal compounds to attract animals for pollination and seed dispersal. Fortunately, many secondary metabolites from plants exhibit diverse pharmacological features. Exploitation of these beneficial effects is the primary goal of researchers working in the area of molecular pharmacology of natural products. Natural products are among the major players in pharmacology in general and in cancer therapy in particular. A considerable portion of antitumor agents currently used in the clinic are of natural origin (e.g. Vinca alkaloids, taxanes, podophyllotoxin, camptothecin derivatives, etc.). Among all chemical classes of natural products, we focus on alkaloids because of their high bioactivity and cytotoxicity. The major targets of alkaloids are DNA, RNA, biomembranes and membrane proteins, enzymes involved in DNA biosynthesis, DNA replication and repair, and protein biosynthesis and conformation. Because the response of tumor cells to cytotoxic agents is determined by multiple factors, and single mechanisms are not sufficient to account for a drug’s activity, genomewide approaches such as microarray technologies are attractive to decipher novel targets and determinants of chemosensitivity towards anticancer drugs. This has been exemplified in this chapter for selected compounds. Although the potential of natural products is increasingly recognized in oncology, it has been estimated that only 15% of all plant species have been investigated exhaustively for potential medical applications. In our opinion, the full potential of natural products will be developed in the years to come.