Gastric cancer is a disease with high mortality, which threatens the health of people for a long time. At present, the main treatment methods are surgery and chemotherapy, but these methods have great harm to the human body. However, it is found that the active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine have an obvious therapeutic effect in the adjuvant treatment of the tumor. Therefore, the active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine have become a research hotspot in the anti-tumor field. In recent years, many related researchers have been particularly active in studying the in vitro activity and mechanism of active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine on human gastric cancer cells. In this paper, the Chinese herbal medicine extracts, polysaccharides, alkaloids, saponins, flavones, terpenes, quinones, volatile oils, esters, phenols, protein components and other active ingredients of Chinese medicine were used as the starting points to investigate the anti-gastric cancer mechanism, such as inhibiting cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis of cancer cells, inhibiting cell invasion and migration; inhibiting over-expression of vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF); interfering with cell mitosis; and regulating cell signaling pathways. Their in vitro inhibitory activity and mechanism for gastric cancer cells were described in this study, providing a theoretical reference for the development and application of anti-gastric cancer drugs.
Keywords: active ingredient; gastric cancer; mechanism of action; traditional Chinese medicine.