Are there new therapeutic options for treating lung cancer based on herbal medicines and their metabolites?
ETHONOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Lung cancer is one of the most lethal cancers in terms of mortality and incidence worldwide. Despite intensive research and investigation, treatment of lung cancer is still unsatisfactory due to adverse effects and multidrug resistance. Recently, herbal drugs have been recognized as one of attractive approaches for lung cancer therapy with little side effects. Furthermore, there are evidences that various herbal medicines have proven to be useful and effective in sensitizing conventional agents, prolonging survival time, preventing side effects of chemotherapy, and improving quality of life (QoL) in lung cancer patients.
Nevertheless, the underlying molecular targets and efficacy of herbal medicines in lung cancer treatment still remain unclear. Thus, we reviewed traditionally used herbal medicines and their phytochemicals with antitumor activity against lung cancer from peer-reviewed papers through Scientific Database Medline, Scopus and Google scholar.


CONCLUSIONS
We suggest that herbal medicines and phytochemicals can be useful anti-cancer agents for lung cancer treatment by targeting molecular signaling involved in the regulation of angiogenesis, metastasis and severe side effects, only provided quality control and reproducibility issues were solved.
Cancer Preventive Material Development Research Center, College of Oriental Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Soo-Jin
SJ
Jeong
Wonil
W
Koh
Bonglee
B
Kim
Sung-Hoon
SH
Kim
D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D008517:Phytotherapy; D010946:Plants, Medicinal
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents