How Should the Worldwide Knowledge of Traditional Cancer Healing Be Integrated with Herbs and Mushrooms into Modern Molecular Pharmacology?

Author: mycolabadmin
7/14/2022
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Summary

This comprehensive review explores how traditional healing practices from around the world use plants and mushrooms to treat cancer. The authors examine thousands of plant species and their active compounds that show promise in fighting various types of cancer through multiple mechanisms like stopping cancer cell growth and triggering cell death. The review emphasizes that proper scientific validation, standardization, and safety testing can help integrate these traditional remedies into modern cancer treatment alongside conventional chemotherapy.

Background

Traditional herbal medicine (THM) represents empirically collected evidence over centuries and remains the primary healthcare resource for approximately one-third of the global population lacking access to modern medicine. Approximately 391,000 plant species and 14,000 mushroom species exist worldwide with largely unstudied medical and biochemical capabilities. Several plant-derived drugs including paclitaxel, vinblastine, and vincristine have become essential components of modern chemotherapeutic regimens.

Objective

This review systematizes information about plants and mushrooms with antitumor properties from traditional medicine systems across five continents. The authors aim to describe active compounds and their mechanisms of action while proposing two priority groups for research and potential integration into modern antitumor therapy.

Results

The review identifies numerous plants and mushrooms with proven antineoplastic properties across Africa, South America, and Asia, including Catharantbus roseus, Tabebuia impetiginosa, Aloe vera, Oldenlandia diffusa, and Scutellaria barbata. Active compounds such as lapachone, aloe-emodin, and ursolic acid target multiple cancer hallmarks including cell cycle progression, apoptosis resistance, metabolism, angiogenesis, and metastasis through modulation of signaling pathways like PI3K/AKT, ERK/MAPK, and JAK/STAT.

Conclusion

Traditional herbal medicine represents a valuable resource for discovering novel anticancer therapeutics, with documented synergistic effects when combined with modern chemotherapy. Integration of THM into modern medicine requires standardization, bioavailability optimization, safety validation, and establishment of quality control measures following Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines.

Published in:Pharmaceuticals (Basel),
Study Type:Review,
Source: PMID: 35890166, DOI: 10.3390/ph15070868