Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. There is always a huge demand for novel anticancer drugs and scientists explore various natural and artificial compounds to overcome this. Gallic acid (GA) is one of the phenolic acids found in many dietary substances and herbs used in ancient medicine. It possesses antiinflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral and antibacterial properties. The present review summarizes the anticancer activity of GA and its derivatives. Various in vitro and in vivo experiments of GA against a variety of cancer cell lines were reported. The previous studies show that the anticancer activity of GA is related to the induction of apoptosis through different mechanisms like generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), regulation of apoptotic and anti-apoptotic proteins, suppression and promotion of oncogenes, inhibition of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and cellcycle arrest depending upon the type of cancer investigated. Conclusively, GA and its derivatives may be considered as a potent drug for cancer treatment alone as well as in combination with other anticancer drugs to increase the efficiency of chemotherapy. However, there is still a need for more experimentation in knock-out animal models and human clinical trials to promote and place GA and its derivatives on the commercial market.

In spite of ample researches and admirable achievements, still there is a reasonable amount of deaths happening every year due to cancer. Further, the number of new cases recorded are also not considerably reduced despite the advent of various preventive measures. Though current clinical approaches yield commendable results, it elicits dreadful systemic side-effects and also fails to avoid the recurrence of the disease. To address these issues, nanotechnology empowered modern drug delivery systems express fruitful properties for targeting and controlled delivery of biomolecules over a period of time. In the past decade, material based cancer research field has witnessed the exploration of several captivating drug delivery approaches for administration synthetic drug to genetic materials. Among those, the electrospinning based nanofibrous mesh has attracted several works on treating common dreadful cancers like lung, breast and colon respectively. The capability of nanofibers to enable increased drug loading, maintaining significant bioactivity, excellent drug encapsulation, controlled and targeted delivery has helped the researchers to achieve the successful administration of a variety of anti-cancer agents. This review gives an insight about the process of electrospinning, its essential parameters, types of drug incorporation and the works reported on common dreadful cancers. Moreover, the future direction of this effective alternative is also delineated, making electrospun nanofibers as a suitable vehicle for delivering drugs to the cancer sites.

Physico-chemical modification induced improvement in biocompatibility of materials.