title: Seeking new anti-cancer agents from autophagy-regulating natural products.
abstract: Natural products are an important original source of many widely used drugs, including anti-cancer drugs. Early research efforts for seeking anti-cancer therapy from the natural products are mainly focused on the compounds with cytotoxicity capability. The good examples include vinblastine, vincristine, the camptothecin derivatives; topotecan, irinotecan, epipodophyllotoxin derivatives and paclitaxel. In a recent decade, the fundamental progression has been made in the understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms regarding tumor initiation, metastasis, therapeutic resistance, immune escape, and relapse, which provide a great opportunity for the development of new mechanism-based anticancer drugs, especially drugs against new molecular and cellular targets. Autophagy, a critical cell homeostasis mechanism and promising drug target involved in a verity of human diseases including cancer, can be modulated by many compounds derived from natural products. In this review, we'll give a short introduction of autophagy and discuss the roles of autophagy in the tumorigenesis and progression. And then, we summarize the accumulated evidences to show the anti-tumor effects of several compounds derived from natural products through modulation of autophagy activity.
authors.affiliation: a Immunology and Cancer Pharmacology Group, State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica , Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College , Beijing 100050 , China.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hua
authors.affiliation: a Immunology and Cancer Pharmacology Group, State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica , Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College , Beijing 100050 , China.
authors.forename: Shuang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: a Immunology and Cancer Pharmacology Group, State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica , Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College , Beijing 100050 , China.
authors.forename: Zhuo-Wei
authors.initials: ZW
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001343:Autophagy / Q000187:drug effects*; D001688:Biological Products / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002166:Camptothecin / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000494:pharmacology; D006801:Humans; D000077146:Irinotecan; D015394:Molecular Structure; D017239:Paclitaxel / Q000494:pharmacology; D000077185:Resveratrol; D013267:Stilbenes / Q000494:pharmacology*
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D001688:Biological Products; D013267:Stilbenes; D000077146:Irinotecan; D017239:Paclitaxel; D000077185:Resveratrol; D002166:Camptothecin
keywords: Resveratrol; autophagy; cancer; curcumin; magnolol; quercetin