OMICS Applications for Medicinal Plants in Gastrointestinal Cancers: Current Advancements and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Gastrointestinal cancers refer to a group of deadly malignancies of the gastrointestinal tract and organs of the digestive system. Over the past decades, considerable amounts of medicinal plants have exhibited potent anticancer effects on different types of gastrointestinal cancers. OMICS, systems biology approaches covering genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, are broadly applied to comprehensively reflect the molecular profiles in mechanistic studies of medicinal plants. Single- and multi-OMICS approaches facilitate the unravelling of signalling interaction networks and key molecular targets of medicinal plants with anti-gastrointestinal cancer potential. Hence, this review summarizes the applications of various OMICS and advanced bioinformatics approaches in examining therapeutic targets, signalling pathways, and the tumour microenvironment in response to anticancer medicinal plants. Advances and prospects in this field are also discussed.

Medicinal Plants for the Treatment of Gastrointestinal Cancers From the Metabolomics Perspective

“…Chronic inflammation and oxidation have been shown to play an essential role in tumorigenesis and progression of GIC ( Dai et al, 2022 ), which could be the potential targets of medicinal plants for GIC therapy. For instance, solasonine is an active compound derived from Solanum melongena L. with potential antineoplastic activity against HCC.…”

“…Early stage of GIC is usually insidious with no obvious symptoms and thus most GIC patients are diagnosed in the middle or late stages, which are not suitable for surgery ( Yu et al, 2020 ). As the main standard therapies for GIC patients who are in middle or late stages, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are still costly and forceless ( Dai et al, 2022 ). In particular, increasing drug resistance and various adverse events occur during radiotherapy and chemotherapy.…”

“…As a complementary and alternative approach to conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy gradually accepted in western countries, medicinal plants have been shown to be a huge reservoir for anti-cancer agents due to their low toxicity and multiple biological activities ( Wang et al, 2015 ; Hu et al, 2016 ). For example, numerous active ingredients from medicinal plants have been identified with antineoplastic activities, such as flavonoids, triterpenes, polysaccharides, and so on ( Dai et al, 2022 ). Adjuvant precursors from the plant origin could enhance the antineoplastic effects and decrease drug resistance of chemotherapy, reduce adverse reactions, as well as improve the immune function in cancer patients ( Guo et al, 2020a ).…”

Using omics approaches to dissect the therapeutic effects of Chinese herbal medicines on gastrointestinal cancers

“…Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an increasingly prevalent difficult-to-manage malignant liver disease. Omics approaches may reveal the anti-HCC mechanisms of various Chinese herbal medicines, such as inducing apoptotic cell death, autophagy, and regulating various non-coding RNAs (Dai et al, 2022). However, very few reports have utilized genomics experiments to investigate the anti-HCC effects of Chinese herbal medicines.…”