Phytochemistry and Pharmacogenomics of Natural Products Derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chinese Materia Medica with Activity Against Tumor Cells
152 Phytochemistry and pharmacogenomics of natural products derived from traditional chinese medicine and chinese materia medica with activity against tumor cells Thomas Efferth,1 Stefan Kahl,2,3,6 Kerstin Paulus,4 Introduction 2 5 3 Michael Adams, Rolf Rauh, Herbert Boechzelt, Cancer is responsible for 12% of the world’s mortality and Xiaojiang Hao,6 Bernd Kaina,5 and Rudolf Bauer2 the second-leading cause of death in the Western world. 1 Limited chances for cure by chemotherapy are a major German Cancer Research Centre, Pharmaceutical Biology, contributing factor to this situation. Despite much progress Heidelberg, Germany; 2Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Graz; 3Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria; 4Institute in recent years,a key problem in tumor therapy with of Pharmaceutical Biology, University of Du¨sseldorf, Du¨sseldorf, established cytostatic compounds is the development of Germany; 5Institute of Toxicology, University of Mainz, Mainz, 6 drug resistance and threatening side effects. Most estab- Germany; and State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant lished drugs suffer from insufficient specificity toward Resources in West China, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China tumor cells. Hence,the identification of improved anti- tumor drugs is urgently needed. Several approaches have been delineated to search for Abstract novel antitumor compounds. Combinatorial chemistry,a The cure from cancer is still not a reality for all patients, technology conceived about 20 years ago,was envisaged as which is mainly due to the limitations of chemotherapy a promising strategy to this demand. The expected surge in (e.g., drug resistance and toxicity). Apart from the high- productivity,however,has hardly materialized (1).
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