Medicinal plants used in Mexican traditional medicine for the treatment of colorectal cancer

Abstract

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Cancer cases numbers are increasing worldwide positioning this disease as the second cause of mortality for both sexes. Medicinal plants have been used in the fight against cancer as the basis for drug discovery and nowadays more than 70% of anticancer drugs have a natural origin. Mexico is regarded for its cultural and biological diversity, which is reflected in the vast traditional knowledge of herbal remedies. In this review we examined herbal remedies employed in colorectal cancer treatment (CRC).

Aim of the study: The goal of this work was to gather scientific reports of plants used in Mexican traditional medicine for CRC treatment.

Materials and methods: We performed a search on scientific literature databases using as keywords: "colon cancer", "gastric cancer", "cytotoxicity", studies "in vitro and in vivo", in combination with "Mexican medicinal plants" or "Mexican herbal remedies". The selection criteria of cytotoxic activity for extracts or pure compounds was based on the National Cancer Institute of USA recommendations of effective dose 50 (ED50) of ≤20μg/mL and ≤4μg/mL, respectively.

Results: In this review we report 25 botanic families and 39 species of plants used for the treatment of colon cancer in Mexico with evidence in studies in vitro and in vivo.

Conclusions: Medicinal plants are still a great source of novel chemical structures with antineoplastic potential as it is proven in this work. The selection criteria and activity was narrowed for methodological purposes, nevertheless, drug discovery of natural origin continues to be a highly attractive R&D strategy.

Keywords: Colorectal cancer; Cytotoxicity; In vivo models; Mexican medicinal plants; Traditional Mexican medicine.