Anupam Bishayee
Larkin University, USA
Title: Natural product-based cancer prevention and intervention: From ethnopharmacology to modern medicine
Biography
Biography: Anupam Bishayee
Abstract
Natural products represent an important source for discovery and development of drugs for cancer prevention and therapy.
About 80% of all drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration during the last three decades
for cancer therapy are either natural products per se or are based on, or mimicked natural products. Local and traditional
knowledge on natural resources has been instrumental for discovery and development of numerous successful drugs. To lead
the search for medicinal plants with potential anticancer activities, ethnopharmacological knowledge can provide a valuable
direction. Various extracts, fractions, mixtures and pure compounds from traditionally used plants have been found to
possess encouraging cytotoxic activities against numerous cancer cell lines. These agents have also been studied for cancer
preventive and therapeutic properties using preclinical animal models that mimic human cancers. The cancer preventive
and anticancer pharmacological attributes of various natural products and compounds can be explained by multiple cellular
and molecular mechanisms, including scavenging of free radicals, detoxification of free radicals, DNA repair, alteration of
cell cycles, programmed cell death (apoptosis), immune surveillance, anti-inflammatory, anti-angiogenic, anti-invasive and
antimetastatic activities as well as their ability to modulate a plethora of dysregulated oncogenic signaling molecules and
pathways. This presentation aims to present studies on cancer preventive and therapeutic attributes of various ethnobotanical
species and underlying mechanisms of action, including those reported from our own laboratory. Current limitations and
future directions of research for successful cancer drug development based on ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology will also
be discussed.