Sustainable healing: Natural compounds facilitating the future cancer treatment

Abstract

Natural products have always played an important part in cancer treatment. These chemicals are generally obtained from plants and microbes, which are significant sources of bioactive molecules with strong anticancer effects. Plant-derived anticancer drugs include Cisplatin, Taxanes, Gemcitabine, Erlotinib, Berberine, and Antroquinonol. These chemicals have shown great success in treating several forms of cancer. Microorganisms, notably bacteria and fungus, create a variety of natural chemicals having potent anticancer properties. Many of these microbial compounds, which were initially identified and utilized as antibiotics, have later been shown to have powerful anticancer effects. Examples include rapamycins, carfilzomib, midostaurin, and Adcetris. These chemicals are physically and chemically varied, and they frequently exhibit their anticancer effects via novel modes of action, such as accelerating specific biochemical processes within cancer cells that impede growth, proliferation, or survival. This review examines a number of medications derived from both plant and microbial sources that have shown efficacy against various malignancies, demonstrating the possibility for combining natural products from multiple sources to produce new, more effective cancer treatments.