Biological and pharmacological activities of noscapine: Focusing on its receptors and mechanisms

Abstract

Noscapine has been mentioned as one of the effective drugs with potential therapeutic applications. With few side effects and amazing capabilities, noscapine can be considered different from other opioids-like structure compounds. Since 1930, extensive studies have been conducted in the field of pharmacological treatments from against malaria to control cough and cancer treatment. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that noscapine and some analogues, like 9-bromonoscapine, amino noscapine, and 9-nitronoscapine, can be used to treat polycystic ovaries syndrome, stroke, and other diseases. Given the numerous results presented in this field and the role of different receptors in the therapeutic effects of noscapine, we aimed to review the properties, therapeutic effects, and the role of receptors in the treatment of noscapine.

An Overview of Natural and Synthetic Phthalides Involved in Cancer Studies: Past, Present, and Future

“…Phthalide derivatives have been attracted interest as promising anticancer drug candidates to improve the therapeutic effect by site-specific administration or site-specific drug activation in advanced preclinical and clinical trials. [161][162][163][164][165] Noscapine (2), [36,37,40,126,127,130,132,148,161,[165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177] 3-n-butylphthalide (NBP) (6), [138,[178][179][180][181] mycophenolic acid (MPA) (13), [163,[182][183][184][185][186][187][188] mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) (14) (the morpholino ethyl ester prodrug of 13) [162,[189][190][191] are some of the good examples of those phthalide analogs that have been investigated and proposed for the treatment of cancer (Figure 2 and Figure…”

“…Regarding the mechanism of antitumor action, the antimicrotubule agents have gained considerable attraction as an emerging class of compounds for cancer treatment owing to their improved patient compliance and minimal side effects. [132,165,169,201] Among these, tubulin-binding drugs have been proposed for treatment of various types of treat malignancies [36,40,177] e. g., leukemia, [174,200] ovarian cancer, [166,167] and T-cell lymphoma, [130,167] breast cancer, [148,175,176,202,203] cervical, [132] gastric, [170] and colon cancer, [127,166,204] pancreatic cancer, [166,168] liver, [36,126] lung cancer, [169,171,175] and gliablastoma. [37,166,172] Currently proposed mechanism for the activity of microtubule-targeting drugs in use is based on either promoting excessive stability of microtubules, like the taxane family (e. g., Paclitaxel and Docetaxel) or inducing depolymerization of microtubules such as the vinca alkaloids (e. g., vinblastine, vinorelbine, and vincristine).…”

“…[161] Noscapine (2) is one of the good examples of phthalide analogs with tubulin-binding action. [161,165,168,170,173] Its antitumor activity has been demonstrated in several in vivo and in vitro studies. [36,37,40,126,127,130,132,148,161,[165][166][167][169][170][171][172][174][175][176][177] Anticancer properties of noscapine through microtubule dynamics [170,173,175] are based on the binding ability of noscapine to tubulin which is a heterodimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein.…”

“…[37,165,174,204] In contrast to other microtubule-interacting agents such as Paclitaxel, Noscapine (2) modifies microtubule dynamics without changing the net equilibrium between the monomer and the polymer distribution of tubulin within the cell and without affecting total tubulin polymer mass. [37,161,165,173,175] It has been evidenced by several authors that noscapine can effectively inhibit proliferation and induce apoptosis in both paclitaxel sensitive and paclitaxel-resistant human ovarian carcinoma cells. [161,165,171,174,200] To cite a few, a novel analog of Noscapine (2) N-propargyl noscapine (NPN) was proposed by Nambiar et al as a potential tubulin-targeted anticancer agent.…”

“…Regarding the mechanism of antitumor action, the antimicrotubule agents have gained considerable attraction as an emerging class of compounds for cancer treatment owing to their improved patient compliance and minimal side effects [132,165,169,201] . Among these, tubulin‐binding drugs have been proposed for treatment of various types of treat malignancies [36,40,177] e. g., leukemia, [174,200] ovarian cancer, [166,167] and T‐cell lymphoma, [130,167] breast cancer, [148,175,176,202,203] cervical, [132] gastric, [170] and colon cancer, [127,166,204] pancreatic cancer, [166,168] liver, [36,126] lung cancer, [169,171,175] and gliablastoma [37,166,172] .…”