Molecular Target-Guided Tumor Therapy with Natural Products Derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

A tremendous interest exists in the Western world in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with rapidly increasing export rates of TCM products from China to Europe and USA. This led to a national decision of the Chinese government to implement a "Plan for the Modernization of Chinese Medicine". Concerning the use of Chinese medicinal herbs, two major directions can be distinguished. One field is phytochemistry and pharmacognosy. Secondary metabolites isolated from Chinese plants can be easily subjected to pharmacological, molecular biological, and pharmacogenomic analyses using methods of modern cell and molecular biology as exemplified for camptothecin from Camptotheca acuminata in the present review. The second field of interest is phytomedicine. Standardized international quality guidelines help to improve quality, safety and efficacy of Chinese medicinal herbs. Sustainability of natural products from TCM can be reached by breeding high-yield varieties or by biotechnological approaches. In the long term, natural products from TCM can contribute to the development of molecular target-guided therapies and individualized treatment strategies.

Synergism and Rules from Combination of Baicalin, Jasminoidin and Desoxycholic acid in Refined Qing Kai Ling for Treat Ischemic Stroke Mice Model

“…6). This manifestation just accorded with the principle of herbal formulae (Fang-Ji), emperor-minister-adjuvant-courier (Jun-Chen-Zuo-Shi) [37]. In a traditional formula, emperor aims at the cardinal pathological symptom of a disease, playing a key role in the treatments.…”

Modes of Action of Herbal Medicines and Plant Secondary Metabolites

“…Several alkaloids which interfere with DNA, telomeres, telomerase, topoisomerase, the cytoskeleton or protein biosynthesis induce apoptosis [51,53,57,62,70,82,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112]. Some of them are used in cancer therapy as chemotherapeutics, such as Vinca alkaloids, paclitaxel or camptothecin (Table 1) [4,13,14,23,105,113,114,115]. …”

“…In the Eurasian T. baccata taxanes are produced in the leaves which can be converted into paclitaxel. Paclitaxel stabilizes microtubules and thus blocks cell division in the late G2 phase; because of these properties, paclitaxel has been used for almost 20 years with great success in the chemotherapy of various tumors [3,11,12,13,14,23,24,38,51,54,55,113,114,115]. …”

“…As a consequence they effectively block cell division and are therefore important drugs used in cancer therapy [11,12,13,23,24,38,54,113,114]. Camptothecin, an inhibitor of DNA topoisomerase used in cancer therapy, is mainly produced from Camptotheca acuminata (but is also found in some genera of Apocynaceae, Gelsemiaceae, Icacinaceae, Rubiaceae) [11,12,13,23,24,38,54,113,114]. …”

An Integrative Platform of TCM Network Pharmacology and Its Application on a Herbal Formula,Qing-Luo-Yin

“…With the recent advent of high-throughput technologies, experimental analyses of the active ingredients screening and the mechanisms of action of herbal formulae have become increasingly various. Investigators often examine a herbal formula from different facets by combining chemical or metabolic fingerprint [5, 6], pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic technology [7, 8], and genomic, proteomic or metabolomics analyses [9–11]. However, herbal formulae with numerous chemical compounds are too complex to be examined solely by conventional experimental approaches.…”