Bioprospecting natural products to find prominent agents for medical application is an area of scientific endeavor that has produced many clinically used bioactive compounds, including anticancer agents. These compounds come from plants, microorganisms, and marine life. They are so-called secondary metabolites that are important for a species to survive in the hostile environment of its respective ecosystem. The kingdom of Plantae has been an important source of traditional medicine in the past and is also enormously used today as an exquisite reservoir for detecting novel bioactive compounds that are potent against hard-to-treat maladies such as cancer. Cancer therapies, especially chemotherapies, are fraught with many factors that are difficult to manage, such as drug resistance, adverse side effects, less selectivity, complexity, etc. Here, we report the results of an exploration of the databases of PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar for bioactive anticancer phytochemicals published between 2010 and 2020. Our report is restricted to new compounds with strong-to-moderate bioactivity potential for which mass spectroscopic structural data are available. Each of the phytochemicals reported in this review was assigned to chemical classes with peculiar anticancer properties. In our survey, we found anticancer phytochemicals that are reported to have selective toxicity against cancer cells, to sensitize MDR cancer cells, and to have multitarget effects in several signaling pathways. Surprisingly, many of these compounds have limited follow-up studies. Detailed investigations into the synthesis of more functional derivatives, chemical genetics, and the clinical relevance of these compounds are required to achieve safer chemotherapy.
The beet root as dietary supplement hepatoprotective ability has gained interest in recent days. The present study was designed to determine the potential hepatoprotective effect of beet root juice as anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant agent to eliminate the hepatotoxic effect of diclofenac as wide spread analgesic agent. Male albino mice were divided randomly into 4 groups, the 1st group served as control group, the 2nd group received 8 mL/kg of freshly prepared beet root juice, the 3rd group received oral administration 20 mg/kg of diclofenac and the 4th group pre-treated with beet root before one-hour diclofenac administration for 30 days. Biochemical results revealed sharp significant raised levels of liver enzymes level (AST, ALT, ALP and GGT) in the 3rd group that received diclofenac, besides to marked pathological changes manifested by high pathological scoring system such as hepatocytes degeneration, ballooning, infiltration and fibrosis. Immunohistochemical analysis elucidated massive incidence of MDA as an indicator of oxidative stress, moreover great number of neutrophils were seen as main component of inflammation. Whereas, pre-treatment of beet root juice one hour before diclofenac resulted in significant decrease of liver enzymes, clear attenuation of pathological features, decrease of pathological score. A great reduction of MDA in liver tissue and number of neutrophils stained histochemically. It was concluded that beet root juice possessed beneficial hepatoprotective role against diclofenac, as significant anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effect.
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