Therapeutic Potential of Naturally Occurring Lignans as Anticancer Agents

Abstract

: Cancer as a long-lasting and dramatic pandemic affects almost a third of the human being worldwide. At present, chemotherapy is the main clinical treatment strategy, but it is difficult to achieve satisfactory efficacy due to drug resistance and side effects. Natural products are becoming increasingly popular in cancer therapy due to their potent broad-spectrum anticancer potency and slight side effects. Lignans are complex diphenolic compounds, comprising a family of secondary metabolites existing widely in plants. Naturally occurring lignans have the potential to act on cancer cells by a range of mechanisms of action and could inhibit the colony formation, arrest the cell cycle in different phases, induce apoptosis, and suppress migration, providing privileged scaffolds for the discovery of novel anticancer agents. In recent five years, a variety of naturally occurring lignans were isolated and screened for their in vitro and/or in vivo anticancer efficacy, and some of them exhibited promising potential. This review has systematically summarized the resources, anticancer activity, and mechanisms of action of naturally occurring lignans, covering articles published between January 2017 and January 2022.

Molecular Docking and Molecular Dynamics Studies Reveal the Anticancer Potential of Medicinal-Plant-Derived Lignans as MDM2-P53 Interaction Inhibitors

“…Therefore, various studies explored the biological potential and possible action mechanisms by which lignans exert their anticancer effectiveness. In this regard, the reported lignans from Ferula sinkiangensis and Justicia procumbens [ 30 , 31 ] ( Supplementary Table S1 ) were assessed as valuable sources for the development of novel anticancer therapeutics [ 32 ].…”