Prostate cancer: Therapeutic prospect with herbal medicine

Abstract

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in men worldwide. A geographic variation on the burden of the disease suggested that the environment, genetic makeup, lifestyle, and food habits modulate one's susceptibility to the disease. Although it has been generally thought to be an older age disease, and awareness and timely execution of screening programs have managed to contain the disease in the older population over the last decades, the incidence is still increasing in the population younger than 50. Existing treatment is efficient for PCa that is localized and responsive to androgen. However, the androgen resistant and metastatic PCa are challenging to treat. Conventional radiation and chemotherapies are associated with severe side effects in addition to being exorbitantly expensive. Many isolated phytochemicals and extracts of plants used in traditional medicine are known for their safety and diverse healing properties, including many with varying levels of anti-PCa activities. Many of the phytochemicals discussed here, as shown by many laboratories, inhibit tumor cell growth and proliferation by interfering with the components in the pathways responsible for the enhanced proliferation, metabolism, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis in the prostate cells while upregulating the mechanisms of cell death and cell cycle arrest. Notably, many of these agents simultaneously target multiple cellular pathways. We analyzed the available literature and provided an update on this issue in this review article.

Anti-prostate cancer protection and therapy in the framework of predictive, preventive and personalised medicine — comprehensive effects of phytochemicals in primary, secondary and tertiary care

“…Current evidence highlights potent anti-cancer effects of phytochemicals and plant-based anti-cancer intervention [5,7,11,12]. Recent reviews and original articles discuss the anti-cancer effects of phytosubstances demonstrated in preclinical in vitro and in vivo evaluations, including remarkable impacts on PCa prevention, inhibition of the disease progression and stimulating effects of phyto-substances on anti-cancer therapies [13][14][15][16]. Identification of health beneficiary effects as well as precise mechanism of the anti-cancer action by phytochemicals are essential for associated drug development and recommendations for personalised dietary supplements [5,9,10].…”

Phytochemicals, Antioxidant and Anticancer Properties of Camellia japonica L. Mistletoe Extracts

“…Recently, there is a greater global interest in nonsynthetic, natural medicines derived from natural sources due to better tolerance and minimum adverse drug reactions are compared to synthetic chemotherapeutic anticancer agents. Many cancer patients prefer herbal medicine because they are believed to be safe, cause less side effects and less likely to cause of dependency [30][31][32]. Thus, there is still a lot to be done in the search for novel natural chemopreventive compounds.…”

Sonicated Extract from the Aril of Momordica Cochinchinensis Inhibits Cell Proliferation and Migration in Aggressive Prostate Cancer Cells

“…Hence, a new therapeutic or drug that could reduce the progression to the metastatic stage may be helpful to enhance therapeutic efciency in prostate cancer patients. Since natural resources are currently receiving much attention for anticancer drug development [7][8][9], natural extracts from plants were the focus of this work, and the mechanisms of cancer cell proliferation and metastasis suppression were targeted.…”