molecules Review A Review of Cytotoxic Plants of the Indian Subcontinent and a Broad-Spectrum Analysis of Their Bioactive Compounds Kishor Mazumder 1,2,* , Biswajit Biswas 1 , Iqbal Mahmud Raja 1 and Koichi Fukase 3,* 1 Department of Pharmacy, Jashore University of Science and Technology, Jashore 7408, Bangladesh;
[email protected] (B.B.);
[email protected] (I.M.R.) 2 School of Biomedical Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma St, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales 2678, Australia 3 Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan * Correspondence:
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[email protected] (K.M.);
[email protected] (K.F.); Tel.: +8801817754648 (K.M.); +81-6-6850-5388(K.F.) Academic Editor: Luisa Tesoriere Received: 7 March 2020; Accepted: 16 April 2020; Published: 20 April 2020 Abstract: Cancer or uncontrolled cell proliferation is a major health issue worldwide and is the second leading cause of deaths globally. The high mortality rate and toxicity associated with cancer chemotherapy or radiation therapy have encouraged the investigation of complementary and alternative treatment methods, such as plant-based drugs. Moreover, over 60% of the anti-cancer drugs are molecules derived from plants or their synthetic derivatives. Therefore, in the present review, an attempt has been made to summarize the cytotoxic plants available in the Indian subcontinent along with a description of their bio-active components. The review covers 99 plants of 57 families as well as over 110 isolated bioactive cytotoxic compounds, amongst which at least 20 are new compounds.