Allium vegetables for possible future of cancer treatment

Abstract

Natural resources such as plants are an upright curing option in treating cancers and reducing the side effects of current therapeutic modalities. Allium genus vegetables are of the most interesting herbs in restricting cancers that includes garlic, onions, leeks, chives, and shallots. These plants have been exploited in folk medicine because of their beneficial health effects in improving numerous diseases. The phytochemical analysis of various Allium genus members showed that, to date, 16 species have proved potential anticancer properties due to the accumulation of various sulfur and organic compounds like S‐allyl mercaptocysteine, quercetin, flavonoids, and ajoene. These compounds with various mechanisms such as hindering cell cycle, inhibiting signaling pathways, inducing apoptosis, and antioxidant activity interfere with diverse stages of formation, growth, differentiation, and metastasis of cancer cells. Similar to garlic and onion, other species have exhibited anticancer activities, so that active natural molecules extracted from them might serve as possible anticancer agents. Therefore, evaluating the main ingredients and studying their anticancer mechanisms are of great importance. In this review, we aim to summarize the available data on anticancer mechanisms of 16 species of Allium genus and their major compounds to assist further researches on the treatment and prevention of cancers.

Combined in vitro and in silico approach to evaluate the inhibitory potential of an underutilized allium vegetable and its pharmacologically active compounds on multidrug resistant Candida species

“…According to Szychowski et al (2018) aqueous extracts are found to be efficient in several biological activities due to their efficacy to extricate compounds. Results are in accordance with Asemani et al (2019) who reports that allium vegetables such as A. sativum , A. cepa , A. hirtifolium , A. jesidianum and A. porrum are a rich source of phytochemicals such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, alkaloids, saponins and organo sulphur compounds. Zhang et al (2020) has suggested A. sativum as a promising candidate for the treatment of cancer due to the similar active phytocomponents reported in our results.…”

The Potential Application of Allium Extracts in the Treatment of Gastrointestinal Cancers

“…The usage of medical herbs dates back to ancient times when they were used to relieve both physical and mental pain, while they are still widely applied and continually investigated nowadays due to their numerous advantages in various fields of medicine. Allium vegetables constitute a group of flowering plants belonging to the Amaryllidaceae family, which are currently one of the most prevalently used in medicine [1]. The Amaryllidaceae family consists of more than 850 different species, among which garlic (Allium sativum), onion (Allium cepa), leeks (Allium tuberosum), chives (Allium schoenoprasumum), and shallot (Allium hirtifolium) are most often used for medical purposes [2].…”

Evaluation of the Influence of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on Economically Valuable Indicators of Onion

“…Лук содержит витамины А, В1, В2, С, никотиновую и пантотеновую кислоты, является богатым источником диетических флавоноидов, а так же F, P, Са, Fe, Al, Cu, Zn, Mn. Лук обладает высокой антиоксидантной активностью, содержит эндогенные метаболиты, имеющие защитные эффекты против развития сердечно-сосудистых и неврологических заболеваний, рака и др., которые вызваны окислительным стрессом (Upadhyay, 2016;Miri, Roughani, 2018;Asemani et al, 2019).…”