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Natural Compounds in Cancer Therapy

The search for natural compounds effective against cancers is an exhaustive and ongoing effort. Natural compounds are involved in the majority of cancer-fighting drugs used today. Organisms from plants to fungi to bacteria to marine animals have been investigated for their potential antitumor properties.

  1. Features

    • The Natural Products Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has been dedicated to research and development of natural compounds for use in fighting cancer since 1960. According to a Nov. 17, 2004, article on the NCI website, the NCI repository houses more than 170,000 chemical extracts from 70,000 different plants and 10,000 marine organisms for analysis. More than 30,000 extracts from bacteria and fungi are housed in the repository as well.

    Function

    • According to the NCI, over 60 percent of drugs currently used to fight cancer are derived from natural compounds. In addition, drugs derived from natural compounds work better for cancer patients than do drugs manufactured synthetically. Research reported by the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University on Aug. 31, 2009, found that natural compounds found in green plants caused cancer cells to stay in their "synthesis phase" longer than is normal, which disrupted replication and eventually lead to tumor-cell death.

    Effects

    • The Linus Pauling Institute at OSU reported that natural compounds from food sources typically thought to play a role in preventing cancer may also play a role in treating it. Chlorophyllin, a compound derived from the chlorophyll in green plants, was ten times more efficient at killing colon-cancer cells than commonly used chemotherapy drugs.

    Significance

    • The NCI estimates that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2009, and over 500,000 will die from it. Nonmelanoma skin cancers are the most common cancers diagnosed in the U.S., followed by lung, breast and prostrate cancers. At the same time, many commonly used cancer therapies in the U.S. can have significant side effects, including nausea, impaired immune function and impaired blood clotting. Research into more-effective drugs with the fewest side effects possible is an important area of biomedical investigation.

    Considerations

    • According to the NCI, 70 percent of the species likely to contain chemicals with anticancer properties are located in the world's rain forests, but only a fraction of these plants have been analyzed. Rapid rates of rain forest clearing may significantly impact our ability to analyze rain forest species for potential antitumor properties before these species are lost.

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