PHARMACOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF NATURAL PRODUCTS FOR CANCER TREATMENT

Abstract

Current treatments such as radio and chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells and consequently have harmful effects on the body. In this sense, we sought to review the effects of several natural products on cancer cells, mitigating the disordered proliferation and evaluate the pharmacological potential for the production of drugs derived from these  products. Although there are several treatments for cancer, the use of  natural products makes it possible to delay the carcinogenic development. In addition, its combined use with drugs developed also points to a promising  and complementary alternative for treating different types of cancer. This  study presents some of the latest research published between the years  2016 and 2019 that assessed the effects of different natural compounds for  treating cancer. The results showed that natural products have great  pharmacological potential to be used in the production of anticancer drugs, directly assisting in the reduction of tumor activities, with a proapoptotic effect, increased caspase-8, caspase-3 and Fas, increased  protein expression Bax or p21 and inhibition of NF-kB and topoisomerase II expression, for example.