Nanotechnology and Natural Products as Novel Anti-cancer Therapy

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INTRODUCTION:

There are new approaches and agents against certain types of cancer that are urgently needed. Some of the new agents use highly advanced technology utilizing nanoencapsulation that will improve the therapeutic index of the natural drugs. Nanoparticles for cancer therapeutics are rapidly evolving and are being introduced in an attempt to overcome several limitations of conventional small-molecule chemotherapeutics. Though chemotherapy is successful to some extent in certain cancers, it has several limitations (14). I will be discussing three natural products (Currcumin, Thymoquinone and Genistein) from plants that have anti-cancer effects. These three natural products have been studied for its antitumor mechanism against pancreatic cancer. The natural products have to be given in large quantities, due to its very short half-life and poor bioavailability. Therefore, to increase its bioavailability, they intend to load the natural products in stearically stabilized micelles and target them on receptors on plasma membrane of tumor cells. By delivering a cargo of chemosensitizers, which effectively block drug efflux from cancer cells, natural products can increase intracellular drug concentrations and significantly enhance the cytotoxic effect of various antitumor effects (14). The stearically stabilized components will have greater growth inhibitory, and apoptotic potential.

BACKGROUND:

PANCREATIC CANCER

Cancer represents one of the most severe health problems worldwide and the development of new anticancer drugs and more effective treatment strategies are fields of utmost importance in drug discovery and clinical therapy (6). Among all cancers, pancreatic cancer is one of the worst. Even with the survival rat...

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...in Long, Yang Wan, Feng Luo, Xia Zhao, and ZhiYong Qian. "Curcumin-loaded Biodegradable Polymeric Micelles for Colon Cancer Therapy in Vitro and in Vivo." The Royal Society of Chemistry10 (2010): 1-10.

20. Kinghorn, Douglas A., Young-Won Chin, and Steven M. Swanson. "Discovery of Natural Product Anticancer Agents from Biodiverse Organisms." NIH Public Access 12.2 (2009): 189-96.

21. Davis, David A., Sarah H. Sarkar, Maha Hussain, Yiwei Li, and Fazlul H. Sarkar. "Increased Therapeutic Potential of an Experimental Anti-mitotic Inhibitor SB715992 by Genistein in PC-3 Human Prostate Cancer Cell Line." BMC Cancer 6.22 (2006): 1-9.

22. Chen, Dongfeng, Xubo Wu, Jiaxiang Wang, Baosan Han, Ping Zhu, and Chenghong Peng. "Morphological Observation of Interaction between PAMAM Dendrimer Modified SWCNT and Pancreatic Cancer Cells." Nano Biomed Eng 2.1 (2010): 60-64.

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