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Herbs in Cancer Therapy: A Preamble
Published in Anil K. Sharma, Raj K. Keservani, Surya Prakash Gautam, Herbal Product Development, 2020
Andrew G. Mtewa, Fanuel Lampiao, Kennedy Ngwira, Patrick E Ogwang, Duncan C. Sesaazi
Conventional peptide drugs, radiotherapy, gene therapy, and other therapies of the same nature have proven to be effective to some extent but having some serious short comings which include high costs of treatment, significantly denying access to average patients, serious adverse effects, and low therapeutic indices among others. Lately, herbal products present a potential pool of alternative medications that can be used directly or prepared in some ways. More workable options are isolates from the botanicals that can easily be modified to improve drug properties for effective outcomes. Some of the reliably effective conventional drugs today are derived from botanical species. These include the Vinca alkaloids (Vinblastine and Vincristine) obtained from Catharanthus roseus which are used to treat bladder, leukemia, and testicular cancers and Paclitaxol, originally isolated from Taxus brevifolia, used to treat breast and ovarian cancers (Shaikh et al., 2016). Generally, in the year 2000, 40% of top drug sales were natural product medicines or their derivatives (Butlet, 2004) while camptothecin and Paclitaxol, anticancer drugs from herbs, amounted to an estimated third of global sales ($3.0bn of $9.0bn) in 2002 (Oberlines and Kroll, 2004).
Bioengineering of Pharmacologically-Active Metabolites for Effective Drug Nano-Formulations from the Callus and Metabolites of Medicinal Plants and Their Significant Application in Nanomedicine
Published in Hajiya Mairo Inuwa, Ifeoma Maureen Ezeonu, Charles Oluwaseun Adetunji, Emmanuel Olufemi Ekundayo, Abubakar Gidado, Abdulrazak B. Ibrahim, Benjamin Ewa Ubi, Medical Biotechnology, Biopharmaceutics, Forensic Science and Bioinformatics, 2022
Charles Oluwaseun Adetunji, Akinola Samson Olayinka, Denisa Ficai, Anton Ficai, Michael Olugbenga Samuel, Wilson Nwankwo, Muhammad Akram, Rumaisa Ansari, Tehreen Riaz, Rida Zainab, Chukwuebuka Egbuna, Oluwaseyi Paul Olaniyan, Hameed Shah, Ruth Ebunoluwa Bodunrinde, Juliana Bunmi Adetunji, Jonathan C. Ifemeje, Michael Chinedu Olisah, Mohammad Ali Shariati, Kingsley Eghonghon Ukhurebor, Daniel Ingo Hefft, Wadzani Dauda Palnam
Several kinds of alkaloids are found in different plants, vinca alkaloids being some of the most common, and here including vincristine and vinblastine, isoquinolone alkaloids. The vinca alkaloids are used as important anti-cancer drugs in therapeutic formulations such as vincristine and vinblastine. The production of the vinca alkaloids is very low in plants, which makes them even more special and expensive in pharmaceutical drugs. Oxidation of the methyl group in vinblastine converts it into vincristine. Both vincristine and vinblastine are found in the callus cultures of the Catharanthus roseus (Iskandar and Iriawati, 2016) and they show significant anti-cancer activities. Microtubule stability plays a vital role in several cellular events like cell division, which cause microtubules a significant target for the anti-cancer drugs or chemotherapy (Jordan and Wilson, 1998). A wedge is introduced at the interface of two tubulin molecules by vincristine and vinblastine that averts the accumulation of heterodimers on the growing microtubules (Gigant et al. 2005). Mitotic spindle of dividing cells is not fashioned as a result of this, which caused the stimulation of c-Jun NH2-terminus kinase (JNK) (Gigant et al. 2005), phosphorylation of Bcl-2 (Ruvolo et al. 2001), arrest of G2/M and apoptosis (Wang et al., 2000). It has been described that proteins such as TCTP, FKBP59, L-plastin or HSP90 in CCRF-CEM leukemia cells are involved in initiating a cellular response to vincristine (Verrills et al. 2003). Moreover, it has also been reported that vincristine regulates the apoptosis of human tumor cells through the NF-kappaB/IkappaB pathway (Huang et al. 2004).
Production of Life-Saving Drugs from Marine Sources
Published in Prasenjit Mondal, Ajay K. Dalai, Sustainable Utilization of Natural Resources, 2017
MMAE (11) and F (53), collectively known as auristatins are structurally modified equipotent derivatives of dolastatin-10 (10). The dolastatins are pentapeptides, originally discovered as constituents of the sea hare Dolabella auricularia. These agents prevent the formation of the mitotic machinery and block α-tubulin polymerization, interacting with the vinca alkaloid binding site on α-tubulin. Antibody conjugation with MMAE and MMAF has provided a number of auristatin-based ADCs that have undergone clinical trials—one of them brentuximab vedotin is currently in market.
Synthesis, characterization and anticancer activity of vincristine loaded folic acid-chitosan conjugated nanoparticles on NCI-H460 non-small cell lung cancer cell line
Published in Egyptian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 2018
Naresh Kumar, Raj Kumar Salar, Minakshi Prasad, Koushlesh Ranjan
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is major type of lung cancer that bears almost 85% of major lung cancer types. Only 17.3% of the people who develop NSCLC survive for 5 years. NSCLC is an aggressive neoplasm, responsible for more lung cancer related deaths every year in the United States than colon, breast, pancreas, and prostate cancers combined together [1]. The major types of NSCLC are – adenocarcinoma (nearly 40%), squamous cell carcinoma (nearly 25–30%) and large cell carcinoma (nearly 10–15%) [2]. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery have been used to treat NSCLC but have serious side effects. Vincristine is used in clinical practice since the early 1960s [3,4] . Vincristine is used to treat different types of cancers, which include acute lymphocytic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, neuroblastoma and lung cancer [5]. It is a vinca alkaloid and obtained from the Madagascar periwinkle Catharanthus roseus [6]. However, multidrug resistance, unwanted side effects on healthy cells and poor availability to cancer cells limit its utilization in medicine. In a few years, anticancer drugs loaded natural and artificial polymers have been tested against cancer cell lines to bypass the p-glycoprotein receptors, the main cause of drug resistance.
Overview of biological mechanisms of human carcinogens
Published in Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 2019
Nicholas Birkett, Mustafa Al-Zoughool, Michael Bird, Robert A. Baan, Jan Zielinski, Daniel Krewski
Oncovin (vincristine sulfate) is a vinca alkaloid that interferes with microtubule assembly and spindle formation, thereby blocking cell replication. Vincristine sulfate induces micronuclei in the bone marrow of mice and hamsters treated in vivo, and aneuploidy and transformation in hamster embryo cells, but does not induce sister chromatid exchange or structural chromosomal aberrations.