Anticancer Compounds in Medicinal Plants 2023

Dear Colleagues,

Cancer, in its multiple forms, is presently one of the leading causes of death in both the developing and developed countries and it became a major health problem and a burden for most public health care systems worldwide. Although several decades of drug discovery and development have provided a number of useful chemotherapeutic agents, there is a continuous interest in the search for new chemical entities with improved anticancer effectiveness and safety.

Since ancient times, humankind has relied on herbal medicines for the treatment and prevention of a plethora of different ailments and their beneficial properties have been recognized both by traditional medicines and more contemporary herbalism practices. Medicinal plants, which have given an important contribution to the collection of compounds that are now at our disposal for cancer therapy, constitute a reservoir of natural products able to provide new molecules with anticancer activity and new molecular frameworks capable to inspire the design of derivatives with improved therapeutic ability. As plant-derived compounds are often devoid of cytotoxicity to normal human cells, the attention of scientific research has been increasingly driven towards natural compounds, as they may represent a source of anticancer molecules with less toxic side effects compared to current chemotherapeutic drugs.

This Special Issue “Anticancer compounds in medicinal plants” invites researchers to contribute with original research or review articles related to natural compounds with anticancer properties present in medicinal plants. The contributions include the discovery of new compounds, the in vitro and in vivo assessment of the anticancer properties of medicinal plants-derived compounds, as well as the elucidation of their mechanisms of action and the design of derivatives with improved efficacy.

Dr. Paulo Santos
Dr. Lillian Barros
Guest Editors

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