Almost 70% of clinically used antineoplastic drugs are originated from natural products such as plants, marine organism, and microorganisms and some of them are also structurally modified natural products. The naturally occurring drugs may specifically act as inducers of selective cytotoxicity, anti-metastatic, anti-mutagenic, anti-angiogenesis, antioxidant accelerators, apoptosis inducers, autophagy inducers, and cell cycle inhibitors in cancer therapy. Precisely, several reports have demonstrated the involvement of naturally occurring anti-breast cancer drugs in regulating the expression of oncogenic and tumor suppressors associated with carcinogen metabolism and signaling pathways. Anticancer therapies based on nanotechnology have the potential to improve patient outcomes through targeted therapy, improved drug delivery, and combination therapies. This paper has reviewed the current treatment for breast cancer and the potential disadvantages of those therapies, besides the various mechanism used by naturally occurring phytochemicals to induce apoptosis in different types of breast cancer. Along with this, the contribution of nanotechnology in improving the effectiveness of anticancer drugs was also reviewed. With the development of sciences and technologies, phytochemicals derived from natural products are continuously discovered; however, the search for novel natural products as chemoprevention drugs is still ongoing, especially for the advanced stage of breast cancer. Continued research and development in this field hold great promise for advancing cancer care and improving patient outcomes.
Keywords: Apoptosis; Breast cancer; Nanotechnology; Natural products; Phytochemical.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.