Efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in treating cancer

Abstract

The morbidity associated with cancer has rapidly increased in recent years, and in the previous 5 years has had a tendency to be the leading cause of fatality compared with cardiovascular disease. Therefore, effective measures are required with an aim to reduce the incidence. Based on the results of clinical investigation, a multidisciplinary treatment strategy for cancer, which includes radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery, targeted therapy and immunotherapy, are prominently used in clinical practice. However, the therapies are insufficient due to multidrug resistance, adverse effects and the presence of the root of the cancer. Therefore, there is a necessity to develop more effective or adjunctive therapies for cancer prevention and treatment. Cancer is now widely recognized as a systemic humoral disease. Similarly, the function of herbal drugs is to modulate the whole body system in a more holistic way. Recently, herbal drugs have been applied to one of the efficient approaches for cancer therapy. Furthermore, there is evidence that various herbal medicines have been proven to be useful and effective in sensitizing the conventional agents against the various factors at the cellular and molecular levels that are associated with the occurrence of cancer and in prolonging survival time, alleviating side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and improving the quality of life in cancer patients.

Keywords: cancer; cellular and molecular level; herbal medicines; quality of life; side effects; survival time.

Figure 1.

Association of the anticancer mode of action with TCM in the tumor microenvironment. TCM anticancer activity involves targeting various steps (cell proliferation, angiogenesis, cell signaling pathways, invasion, metastasis and multidrug resistance) to inhibit tumor development, reduce the toxicity of other therapies to tumors in the microenvironments, and accordingly, to improve the quality of life for patients. TCM, traditional chinese medicine; MRP, multidrug resistance protein; VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor; PDGF, platelet-derived growth factor; P-gp, P-glycoprotein.