Title:Therapeutic Potential of Naturally Occurring Lignans as Anticancer
Agents
Volume: 22
Issue: 17
Author(s): Yumin Shi, Jun Wang and Heng Yan*
Affiliation:
- Hubei Provincial Institute for Food Supervision and Test, Wuhan, Hubei 430070, P.R. China
Keywords:
Lignans, Natural products, Antiproliferative activity, Anticancer efficacy, Drug resistance, Mechanisms of action.
Abstract: Cancer is a long-term and deadly pandemic that affects nearly a third of the world's
population. Chemotherapy is currently the most common therapeutic treatment, but it is difficult to
achieve satisfactory efficacy due to drug resistance and adverse effects.Natural products are becoming
increasingly popular in cancer therapy due to their potent broad-spectrum anticancer potency
and slight side effects. Lignans are complex diphenolic compounds comprising a family of secondary
metabolites existing widely in plants. Naturally occurring lignans have the potential to act on
cancer cells by a range of mechanisms of action and could inhibit the colony formation, arrest the
cell cycle in different phases, induce apoptosis, and suppress migration, providing privileged scaffolds
for the discovery of novel anticancer agents. In recent five years, a variety of naturally occurring
lignans have been isolated and screened for their in vitro and/or in vivo anticancer efficacy, and
some of them exhibited promising potential. This review has systematically summarized the resources,
anticancer activity, and mechanisms of action of naturally occurring lignans, covering articles
published between January 2017 and January 2022.